(Rewritten)All the Difference in the World
by MajorMutation
Summary: Time changes some things, and keeps others the same. But after five years apart, they may be just too different to pick up where they left off. Arnold has spent five years in the darkness. But is that too long for her? (Rewritten version of older story.)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is the rewritten version of All the Difference in the World. Some of you who follow my stories may have heard that I've decided to rewrite this story, and here it is. You don't have to read to original to understand this story. Some of the changes, for those of you who have read the original, are that I will change the overall tone. It will be a bit darker, the characters past stories will be a bit more complex, and not revealed in one chapter. It will unfold over the course of the story. The characters past coming back to haunt them will be the main plot device in this story. And just like the original, I will be upping the rating some time later.  **

**Summary: Time changes some things, and keeps others the same. But after five years apart, they may be just too different to pick up where they left off. Arnold has spent five years in the darkness. But is that too long for her?**

* * *

Pen scratching across a blank piece of notebook paper, his fist pressed into his cheek, hearing the professors words but none of them actually reaching his brain, knowing he should be paying attention but not having neither the desire or the need to listen, it was like being in briefing all over again.

Might as well be. At least now he knows he's not the only one not paying attention. The guy next to him on his laptop is checking his Facebook account, and the girl on his other side is on her phone tweeting. Letting in a long breath, he spins his pen around in his fingers and taps it hard against his notebook to click the head back inside the pen and lets it fly out of his hand and land on the desk with a hard clatter and fall to the floor. It gains a few looks, but he just moves his hands to the back of his head and closes his eyes.

He probably should be paying attention. But part of him is still trying to figure out why he signed up for classes here anyway. Work is always just a phone call away when he needs it. Change of pace, maybe. A petty attempt to slow things down, make it quiet.

The professor is still going over the syllabus for the class and is rattling off different assignments that will be due. And he knows that when it's this quiet, his mind likes to go places that he didn't want to go in the first place. He found out quickly that he needs to think of something calming. Some place quiet, comforting, soft, warm.

Some place happy.

* * *

Soft lips move against his in a smooth motion, more passionately than she usually does. Her body not wanting to stop moving under his. Every part of her moving and touching him, pulling at every part of him, insatiable even for her. She's never been like this. Things have gotten heated between them once in a while over the past few months, but never like this, never this primal and unaware of what path her actions are making him take them down. Or maybe she knows exactly what she's doing to him, has clear intentions and is desperate to achieve her goal despite it never even being brought up in any mood of conversation.

Clawing her nails into his shirt and tugging it up his back, he can do nothing but surrender to her and let his body, and maybe even his heart, take over. Her lips start to falter off rhythm with his, opening when his are trying to close around hers when she tries to pull his shirt off over his arms that are anchored around her, supporting him so's to not crush her, even when her legs are telling him to just let himself fall into her, coiling themselves around his waist tightly enough to where it feels like he's softly being crushed.

He's always loved her legs.

He moves his weight onto one arm, shifting himself and making her jump a bit, and moves his hands to the hem of her shirt and lets his thumb graze the territory he's been wanting to tread, but scared to. After her gasp lets out and turns into a moan, his conscience pushes past everything else and makes him speak up, making sure it's not just the drinks that he is sure were spiked. "Beautiful."

Enclosing his lips in her soft, wet lips, she moans again, acknowledging that she heard him.

Still moving his thumb against the hot skin of her lower abdomen, and both their bodies affirming what he's about to ask, he lets go of her lips, reluctantly, and lifts his head to look her in the eye. "Is this going where I think it's going?"

Her puffed lips and slightly smugged lip gloss curls into a smirk and quickly pushes against his side, flipping them over and sinking his body into the plush and tossed bedding of a bed that isn't theirs. The slow movement of her hips is his answer, and the theft of every other sense is his confirmation. "Yes."

Moving to attack him with her lips, and every other part of her, with him helpless with his hands pinned, his conscience once again gets the better of him. "Are you sure?"

She stops just an inch or two away from his lips, leans back a bit and flips her hair, forcing him to suppress the urge to groan.

"We've only been dating for four months."

She lets out a short sigh, as if it was a switch to turn off her mewling body, because everything on her stops moving when she does. "I want this, okay? I just need this one night..." She averts her eyes as a fear quickly crawls into her features. "... to be perfect." She says and looks into his eyes again. "Okay?"

He can give her that.

He slips his hands out from underneath her grip that slackened, and slowly leans up and presses his lips to hers. She responses immediately and sinks into his soft kiss like she usually does and frames his jaw with her warm hands. He feels her back jump a bit when he moves his hand up her spine, and her breath do the same. Almost as if she was...

* * *

That's where he stops. He can never make it past that point. Even though that night was the best night of his life, it was only the sharpest point of a very dull knife.

She never even called. Never wrote except for a four paragraph note he found on the nightstand. There are some nights when part of him bitterly thinks that she was just using him that night, one night of fun before she ran off to where ever it is she ran off to. But then he remembers running his hand out her spine, and the definite feeling of her fighting back a sob as she took his hand and let him carry her off the edge of oblivion. He's decided that that night was serious to her. Hasn't decided if she was being vague in her note on purpose, or because she herself didn't know where she was headed.

No point dwelling on it now. She's gone for good.

He lets out a breath and bends down, picking up his pen off the floor and clicks it, deciding that maybe burying himself in note taking will be mindless enough to take his mind some where else. But when he looks down at his notebook, he sees that in his scribbling, he's written the first line of the note she left. Angry with himself for dwelling on it, or maybe because he still has the note tucked away in his dresser back at his apartment, and angry at her for leaving in the first place, he grabbed the paper and rips it from the notebook, crumpling it tightly in his hands.

How could she just leave like that? Not even talk to him in person. Maybe if she had stayed, he wouldn't have had to do the things he's done. No, he won't let him think that. His atrocities are his own fault alone. He won't be such a pussy as to put them on someone elses shoulders.

He looks up at the clock, hoping that at least an hour has had to have passed by now, but seeing that it's only been twenty minutes. Feigned hopelessness and annoyance floods him and he clicks his pen again, and commits himself to start taking notes.

"You will then be assigned to write a two page paper, five hundred words, on said subject, and-"

The door bursts open, and his body reacts. When he comes back, he realizes he's bent over his desk with his hands over his head. Realizing where he is, he takes a deep breath and sits back up, trying to act like nothing happened, despite the fact that the people on either side of him are looking at him with indifferent eyes. Not the first time it's happened since he's gotten out.

He settles back in his seat and leans back, hears the door shut. "Please join us." The professor says.

He looks up to the front of the class, seeing a girl who just smiles sheepishly and moved her fingers behind her ears as a nervous behavioral tick. A very familiar behavioral tick. No, it couldn't be her. But as the girl took the first empty seat in the front row, the more he couldn't look away.

The long, beautiful hair. The healthy, thin figure. The tanned skin. The sheepish, nervous smile she flashed just before she took her seat. It couldn't really be her, could it?

No. It's been five years since she disappeared. It couldn't be her. But...

As she leans over to open up her backpack, and a piece of hair falls out of her ponytail, when she replaces it, and her eyes come into his line of sight... he'd know those eyes anywhere. It's her.

He hasn't felt his heart thump this hard since his first roll call in BT. He felt more confident then than he does now. Hasn't sweated this much his his first patrol duty at the first FOB on his first tour. Hasn't felt this powerless since the last time he had blood on his hands that wasn't his. He spends what feels like a few minutes staring at her, part of him hoping that she'll feel someone watching her and she'll look back and spot him. But what if it isn't her? Maybe it's true that we all have doppelgangers out there.

The class suddenly erupts in noise and movement. This snaps him back to reality and makes him realize that he must have been staring at her for much longer than a few minutes, and that class was now over. He quickly closes his notebook, puts it in his back and slings it over his shoulder, sliding and clipping his pen on the collar of his t-shirt. It isn't until now that he wishes he hadn't chosen a seat in the very back row of class. But looking over to her, she's still gathering her things.

People keep passing in front of him, and he's starting to get pissed off, even more so when he see's a preppy guy with gelled hair eye her and slickly. It's then that he pushes the desk beside him out of the way to get to her. He's now standing behind her after she had just lifted her backpack onto her shoulders and is looking down at what is probably a cell phone.

He takes a deep breath to calm himself, his breath training briefly flashing through his mind, and clears his throat. It draws her attention in the form of a glance over her shoulder. Obviously seeing someone is behind her, she steps to the side to let him through, her attention still down on her phone. "Hey Beautiful." He says in the tone, that if it is her, she is sure to recognize.

Her attention is raptured immediately off her phone and she looks her eyes up to him, and she's finally looking into his eyes, utter shock washing over her. "Arnold?"

It is her. And he can't fight his smile anymore. "Helga."

" _Arnold!"_ She yelps and drops her backpack to the floor, jumping into him and wrapping her arms around his neck. Once he feels the familiar shape of her body land against him, he whips his arms around her midsection and hugs her tightly against him. Her arms coiled around his neck, her legs popped up into the air, the sound of her happy laughter ringing in his ears, it's the closest feeling he's had since that night with this woman five years ago.

Her arms start to loosen and he sets her back on the floor, reluctant to loosen his arms from around her, afraid that she'll run off again. "Oh, Arnold, it's so good to see you!" She says happily and hugs him again, this time pulling him down to her. He's has only an inch on her at the most, so he wraps his arms around her again and tightly pulls her to him, the feelings he's had festering all this time winning over his resentment. He's just wanted her back, and now he has her.

"I wish I could say the same, but I don't know if you're really here or not." He says over her shoulder.

She puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes back, giving him a puzzled look, but with a smile. "What are you talking about?"

"Helga, I haven't seen you five years. You'll have to forgive me if I have to convince myself if this is real or not."

She smiles and arches her brow, as if to say 'how sweet', and lets her arms fall to her sides. "I'm really here, Arnold."

"Then I guess you know what I'm going to say next." He says and lets his hands fall off her.

She looks down at the floor and nods, looking back up to him a second after, a smile still effortlessly gracing her face. The Helga that left never smiled that effortlessly. "Where I've been." He just keeps looking at her, not trusting himself to use words, afraid that they'd come out laced with venom. "Why don't I buy you a cup of coffee and explain on the way."

* * *

"You didn't exactly leave a mailing address in that note you left." He finally said after two solid minutes of silence between them as they made their way out to the quad. He's spent the time drinking in the way she's changed. She never dressed this way, wearing a wife beater and blue jeans with a sweatshirt tied around her waist. The girl that left him wore lose fitting clothing, cargo pants, skate shoes. Tight clothing was never an option with the Helga that left him lying in bed all those years ago.

"I'm sorry, Arnold." She said sincerely. "I was going to tell you that I was leaving. And trust me, if I could do it differently, then I would, believe me."

"Where have you been, Helga?" He says seriously, refusing to let her skirt the real issue. He doesn't look at her, just keeps his stare pointed towards the ground and his hands in the pockets of his field jacket.

He hears her let out a breath, and pause. "A few days before graduation, I went to the guidance councilor and signed up for the Peace Corps."

He looks over to her, surprised. Having just closed many theories he's written over the years, and opened so many others. "You joined the Peace Corps?"

She smiles and nods, looking over to him with confidence and assurance in her blue eyes. "My sister did it when she graduated boarding school."

Why'd she leave without telling her, how could she not tell him, how could she be so scared that she felt she couldn't tell him? "Where'd they send you?"

"Tanzania. I spent three years there. Then after that, a year in Ethiopia." He felt pride in him. There are a lot of reasons he should be angry at her, more to never to speak to her again. But she did something good in the world. Something that mattered. "Then after what happened in Ethiopia, I decided it was best to come home. I decided to go to school and was able to land some Pell grants."

"What happened in Ethiopia?"

Her body language shifts in an instant, and when he reads it, he regrets asking. He should know better than anyone not wanting to talk about something like that. "I-I uh... I just got homesick." He knows she is lying, but he would lie too.

"What'd you do in Tanzania?" He asks, knowing it will make her happy talking about the time she spent helping people. He knows what the Peace Corps does, ran into them a time or two.

A smile returns to her face and her shoulders seem relieved of the weight that he slammed her with. "I taught children English, reading, writing, grammar. It really felt great. They were all so grateful."

"I'm happy for you, Helga." He says, careful not to get too personal into the conversation, and making the decision to let her bring it up when she's ready.

"Well, what about you? What's been keeping you occupied since high school?" She asks as she swung open the door to the campus' coffee shop.

"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you, Helga." He said behind her as she stepped up to the counter, waiting for someone to come up to the register.

"Come on, Arnold. I told you where I've been. I think I get the right to earn where you've been." She says with a confident smirk that reminds him of the old Helga. Just then, someone appears behind the counter, and they each order coffees, with her telling the cashier to keep the change from the five, and he followed her to the table to wait for her to put cream and sugar in her coffee. He takes it black.

"You really want to know?" He asks her, surprised she hasn't looked at the name velcro'd into his jacket. She just lifts her coffee cup to her lips and raises her brow, waiting for her answer. He smiles, deciding to just get it out in the open, and lips his cup to his lips. "I've been in Iraq."

* * *

 **A/N: I've written too many scenes for this rewritten version to keep it inside anymore, and I've decided to start it.**

 **For those followers of my other stories, I'm not finished. I'm about half way through part four of the epilogue of Not A Soul!, and I've come up with a plot device for Can't See the Forest and I'm going to start writing it soon and see out it plays out. Thanks for the never ending support, and I really hope you enjoy this story!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Next chapter up. Hopefully this chapter will give you a glimpse into the overall tone shift I'm talking about. A little more back story revealed and more foundation as to the overall plot. There are some things that I wanted to add into this version, and one thing I wanted to add was something specific to the army branch of the military. Let's see if you can name it!**

* * *

Grabbing some napkins out of the dispenser, he starts wiping up the hot coffee that Helga had just spit up on the floor. Knelt down, he hears her coughing lightly. If he had to guess, she would have never had that reaction. May be a bit surprised, but never as shocked as to spit coffee on the floor.

"I'm sorry." She says in a hoarse voice, still having coffee caught in the wrong part of her throat. He stands up with the hot, dirty napkins in his hand and puts them in the small trash can next to him. "Did you just say you've been in Iraq?"

"That's where the army sent me." He says and picks up his coffee cup, taking a small sip.

"You joined the army?" He hears fear trickle into her voice. Maybe it's just the surprise. He decides to simply take his finger and tap it against his tag on his jacket. "Wow." She says slowly. Not happy for him. He doesn't know why he expected anything more. He's not happy for the experience.

He just lets out a breath and starts making his way over to a small table next to a window. She sits down across from him, leaning forward on her elbows with a deep concern etched into her brow. "I singed up a month and a half after you left." He was going to say after graduation, but part of him wants her to know that there's some of it that's her fault. After she doesn't respond, he decides to just let it all out. "Two weeks after you left, Grandpa died. A week after that, Grandma died after going off the deep end. Took the car and sped down the street thinking she was a cop after Al Capone." He laughs bitterly and shakes his head.

He hears her start to speak, but she chokes it down, letting him continue.

"I tried to hold the boarding house together on my own, tried to pay the bills and everything. But I found out that we were facing foreclosure before they even died. With everything going on, I just..." He lifts his cup and stares into the cup, "needed to get away."

There's a long moment of silence between them, and he doesn't want to share any war stories with her. None of them have a happy ending. "Where'd they send you?"

"Did two tours in Iraq, then after I did my three years, I did some contracting work." Best way to put it.

"What brings you back home?"

"Same thing as you. I was homesick." He lies.

"Well, Arnold, I'm proud of you." His eyes shoots up to hers, and shes smiling softly. "You went out, you fought for our country-"

"I didn't fight for anything!" He snaps, seeing her jump in fear but is unable to stop the spew of his anger. "I fought because I was told to, because I wasn't given a choice! No one ever tells you that when they put a gun in your hands, they also put one to your head." He lifts his cup and takes a long sip to shut himself up, opening his throat to burn himself, probably on purpose. He glances up and it's the first time since they've been reunited that she hasn't had a smile on her face. Now she has a slight fear in her eyes.

"I'm sorry." She says with an evident shake in her voice.

"It's not your fault I've seen a part of this 'war'," he says with air quotes, "that nobody likes to talk about." After another long pause and another long sip from his cup, he refocuses himself on the beautiful girl in front of him. After all, she's the one thing that's helped. "I'm sorry, Helga." He says and looks back up to her. "I'm still trying to... reintegrate myself back into civilian life." He says, looking out the window they're sitting next to, unable to bare looking her in the eye anymore. She probably feels like she doesn't even know him anymore. Funny since he's felt the same way for a long time now.

He hates himself now. The one thing, the one person that he's focused on to reel himself back in over the years from the anger, the fear, the anxiety, the hopelessness, and he finally has her back, yet here he is, giving her a reason to leave all over again. Probably better that way. His head sinks and a cold, heavy, dark, and an all too familiar depression hits him. Maybe he just isn't fit for civilian life anymore.

It's just then that he feels a warmth on top of his hand. He looks up, surprised that once he feels the touch, before even realizing what it is that is happening, he feels the weight lift off of him somehow. A simple gesture if there ever was one, a simple thing as her putting her soft hand on top of the one that is on the handle of his half empty coffee cup has, even for a moment, made the past five years vanish. He even starts to feel a smile crawl onto his face when her thump starts to run itself across his knuckles.

He wants to return her gesture. Look up to her and smile to let her know it's working, putting his hand on top of hers, grab onto her hand, pull her forward and kiss her like he used to back in high school? But no, she's paralyzed him. He sucks in a slow breath in through his nose and lets it out just as slowly, telling himself to focus on the here and now. "I am sorry, Helga." He says softly, looking back up to her to find her wearing a beautiful, soft, and genuine smile.

"It's okay, Arnold." She says and removes her hand, placing it back on her own cup, making him shiver when she pulls it away. "We've all got our scars." She says with more of an edge as her eyes go straight down into her coffee cup. He doesn't want her asking, not yet, so the least he can do is offer her the same respect.

"Well, listen," He starts and stands up. "I've got to get to another class, but..." He says and pauses as she stands up, offering him a soft, half lidded smile. God she's so beautiful. "If you want to pick up where we left off, I think I can stand to share a war story or two with you here, tonight at twenty hundred hours."

Her smile widens and her eyes sparkle just as he remembers. "I think I can be here at eight."

He smiles and they start out the door, with him pushing it open for her and her walking in front of him and his conscience chastising him for thinking that she smells the same way as she did in high school, with that faint hint of apple, cinnamon, and flowers. Standing in front of each other, outside in a warm breeze of early September, he wants nothing more than to snake his hands around her, pull her into him and kiss her and not stop. And there's a part of him that thinks that that's exactly what she wants him to do with the way she's smiling at him. But another part of him is whispering to him that she's smiling because she grew up and matured without him, and was able to achieve happiness without him. At the same time being angry with himself that he's angry that it wasn't with him.

He can't keep thinking like this if he wants her back. Just focus on here and now. On her.

After what seems like a very long moment, she reaches up and slowly wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him softer than before, but at the same time tighter than before also. He wastes no time in enveloping her in his arms, his arms snaking fully around her, his hands softly grasping her sides opposite and his face having to strongly fight back the urge to turn into her the crock of her neck. "It was really good to see you again, Arnold." She says into his ear, making his whole body shiver at her breath hitting him in that place, a flash of a memory whispering sultry words in his ear, straddling him on his old couch in his bedroom.

"It was worth the five year wait to see you again, Beautiful." _Shit!_ His whole body freezes, his pulse starting to race but he quickly corrects himself and keeps it under control. Just take a deep breath and step back before it gets worse.

He slowly runs his hands back from around her and takes a small step backward, his hands still on her sides, and hers still on his shoulders. She has a happy, but somewhat generic smile on her face, almost as if it's fake. Great, he's fucked everything up now. Usual. One second, and he calls her the pet name that drove her wild in high school. "Well, uh..." She says with a slight tremble in her voice, "Oh, here." She says and pulls out a pen and her notebook from her backpack. "Let me give you my phone number." She writes for a few seconds then hands him a scrap of paper with her phone number written on it. Cute, she still puts lines through her sevens.

He looks back up to her and smiles. "I'd give you mine, but I don't have one."

Her brow perks up on one side, "How do I know you'll be here then?" She asks, almost playfully if he hears it right.

He just smirks and shrugs his shoulders, burying his hands in his field jacket. "You'll just have to trust me, I guess." She's looking him in the eye and it's only a few seconds of what he feels is an intense moment between them due to her biting her lower lip. She used to do that when she wanted to argue with him, but didn't have a good enough comeback. "Think you can do that?" He asks for her with a cocked brow.

Her lower lip returns and her smile softens. "You be here at eight and you'll find out."

He decides to let her have the final word and smirks a little wider to one side. He makes his way past her, brushing against her bare arm as he does. Making his way down the path through the quad of Hillwood U, he draws in a long breath and lets it out to try and cleanse himself of the interaction he just had. He feels her eyes on him, but doesn't look back to make one last goodbye before he sees her tonight. Trying to be mysterious, maybe. Or maybe it's just that if he does, he might run back over and do something drastic.

A part of him wonders if that fiery rebel he fell for in high school is still there. Then again, the naive orphan she fell for isn't. He died in Iraq.

* * *

Looking at his watch, he should be there just a few minutes past eight. He had enough time to go back to his place, work out, and shower. Had time to think, lay out a strategy, so to speak. Could invite her to dinner by the end of the night if everything goes right. He smiles at the thought of seeing her dressed up again and reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out the small two by four picture she let him take of her. It's faded and worn, the top right corner torn. She has her hair down, rare for her at the time, a soft but radiant smile, a light pink t-shirt as usual, and a look in her eyes that has said to him every time he's stared at it 'I love you.'

He sighs silently and carefully slips the picture back into his pocket. He's within sight of the coffee shop that they agreed to meet at, and looking at his watch, it's just five past eight. Looking in the window, she's already sitting at the table they were this morning and has a zip up hoodie on with the zipper left open, a book closed in front of her and her cell phone to her ear. He smiles at the sight of her in the soft lighting of the coffee shop and picks his pace up, whipping the door open.

"Hey, I have to go, he's here." She says into her phone and stands up. "Love you too."

He feels himself freeze, his smile vanishing, his heart sinking, and his veins run cold. He is paralyzed as she smiles bright just as she did this morning and is forced to watch her as she extends her arms out to him and hugs him in greeting. With his breath shaking more than it has in a long time, he just pulls his hands up and puts them on her back. She steps back just after a few seconds and is still smiling, but it just feels patronizing now. "Hey." She says happily and sits back down.

He lets out a short, forceful breath and demands himself to at least smirk. He grabs onto the back of the chair with a sweaty hand and pulls it out, sitting down uncomfortably. "Hey." He repeats, unable to think of anything else.

All his fantasies, his dreams he had for them, his plans, his vision he's had of her. It's all gone. He hasn't ever felt this betrayed. His legs are telling him to jump out of his seat and just run, his fists telling him to punch somebody. She's talking to him but all he hears is a muffled voice. There's someone else. There's never been anyone else with him. No one serious anyway. Just a one night stand when he really let himself go on leave. Dammit Eddy. "Arnold?"

He shakes his head and refocuses. "Huh?"

"I asked what you thought of Hillwood U so far."

She has the nerve to talk small talk with him? Just... cam down.

He settles for just giving her off handed answers, and it continues for about ten minutes. He's closed up and he knows it. She's asking all the questions and there's only one he wants to ask, but won't. After a while, she asks what it was like in Iraq, and if he was scared. "Don't remember being scared." He says emotionlessly. That part he's being honest about.

"Wow, really? I was pretty scared in-" She cuts herself off and he looks up sharply. First time he's looked at her since he walked in. She's probably noticed that he hasn't looked at her all night.

"There it is again." He says. She looks up with dilated pupils and evident fear. He doesn't want to ask, but from what he can gather, she hasn't told anybody, and she probably needs to let it out. He doesn't want to ask, but it being to help her, he can't stop. "What happened in Ethiopia, Helga?"

She averts her eyes down to her cup and takes a deep, shaky breath. He can even see her hand shake. "After I did four years in Tanzania, I was sent up to a small village in Ethiopia to teach." She starts in a small, scared voice. Barely there. "Three months after I started, a group of rebels came through. They didn't even give us any warning. Just drove in and starting shooting people. I uh... I was teaching the kids grammar in an old church when I heard the shots and the villagers screaming, and had the children hide in between the pews. We were there for twenty minutes, listening to them killing some people, capturing others. When they..." She breaks and he watches as a tear falls from her cheek.

She hasn't told this to anybody. He can tell.

She takes another breath to try and regain her composure, but he can clearly see that it's not working. "When they found us, they grabbed me and drug me outside by the arm. After they lined up all the men in front of us and executed them, they loaded us in the back of a truck and drove us to a their base." She sniffles and part of him wants to tell her to stop, but another part of him, the soldier, is listening and wants to hear. "They held me there for four months. They tried to ransom me off to the government, planning to sell me out to slavery after they had gotten their payment."

It couldn't be.

"It was on the night that they were going to sell me and that they were planning to... use me..." She says, her voice shaking so bad he can barely understand her, "that I heard an explosion and gunfire, and everybody start yelling. A few minutes after that, I heard a man shouting orders in English. I can still remember as one of the guards came in to kill me, his pistol was aimed at me and I thought for sure that I was going to die. I closed my eyes and heard a shot, then another two shots. I opened my eyes and see him on the floor. Just seconds later I see an American soldier come through the door. H-He wasn't dressed like a regular soldier though. He didn't have on a jacket, just a vest, helmet and mask."

No.

"He called on his radio and said that I was secure. He pulled my gag off and asked me if I was hurt and a few minutes after, I was on a van to the American embassy. They sent me home and I enrolled here at Hillwood U as a teaching major."

It's impossible.

He watches as she reaches up and roughly swipes her cheek with her palm, and hears her sniffle again. Her eyes are still red and puffy and there's still the track of a tear on the cheek that she didn't wipe off. He was trained to handle situations like the one she was in. Hell, he's been in situations like that. But she wasn't. She was teaching kids how to read and write. He takes a deep breath, the thought of her possibly having someone else not even crossing his mind, and reaches up with his hand and puts it over hers. He looks back up to her and see's that a smile has worked it's way back onto her face.

It worked for him, and it looks like it worked for her.

* * *

"Alright boys, you know the sitrep. Recon puts ten on patrol, assume more, two high facing south in towers. Snowman, that's you. Three entrances, go in two each. Me and Red will take south once Snowman is done. South park and Benny, take west. Brightside, you and Eddy take east. Once you two are inside, look for survivors. We'll take care of remaining resistance and clear a path. Quick hit and grab, boys. Let's do it, hoo-ya?"

"Hoo- _Ya!_ " He and everyone in the truck shouts. "Look at the bright side, Eddy." He says to Eddy next to him, checking his magazine. "At least we're here together."

"Shut the fuck up, Brightside." Eddy says on a laugh.

Arnold chuckles and pulls on his mask.

* * *

He snaps awake in a sweat, panting.

It couldn't have been her that night.

It just couldn't.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Another chapter is up. Couldn't keep this in my head any longer. Had to write it. I like that you guys like this.**

 **Please advise: Language that might be offensive is used in this chapter, and will be used through out the story.**

* * *

"Power cut, proceed."

He nods and Eddy goes first, rifle drawn, and he's right behind him. Eddy fires and plants two in the chest of a target, and he fires two center mass on the target just about to draw. Him and Eddy were always a good team, able to read each others motions. "Prelim recon puts the target top floor, north side corner, copy?" Commander comes on the com.

"Solid copy, Commander." He says into his set. They clear the staircase, him taking point. Taking cover at the top of the stairs, he signals Eddy to split up and take the right hallway. Eddy nods and waits for his signal. He signals and swings his rifle around, pointing down the hall, moving faster than he usually does. He hears someone shouting in a language he can't understand. "Count!" He yells.

Hearing four shots from Eddy's rifle, and the fire fight muffled outside, he hears Eddy call out. "Three down, clear south!"

"Target?" He shouts still moving down the dank, dark hall.

"Negative!"

He stops and takes a knee when he sees an insurgent comes out from around the corner. The insurgent doesn't see him, just lifts his gun to something in the room he's facing into. Not taking the time to wonder what it is, he sights, putting a round through the forearm, then two in the back. "One down, clear it north!" He shouts. He stands up and quickly makes his way toward the door.

He's shocked at the sight he sees. It's the first time on this squad that they've gotten to the target on time. "Hostage secure!" He calls out. "Hostage secure. Repeat: we got her." He says into his set.

"Roger that, Brightside. Sending Red and Snowman up to clear it. Final sweep, bring her out." Commander orders.

He checks his barrel and shoulders his rifle, swinging it on his sling over his shoulder. She's sobbing, trying to scream over her gag and is bound by rope. She's dirty, sweaty, shaking violently. They got her. They finally got it. "It's okay, I'm here to help." He says to the hyperventilating, shaking, scared to death woman who's huddled in the corner. He reaches out and pulls down her gag. "Are you hurt?"

The woman just begins to sob uncontrollably, crying out at the top of her lungs.

He ignores it and lifts the woman's bound hands and puts them around his neck, picking her up off the floor. "Hostage secure, severely shaken up, malnourished, needs a medic. On our way out, Commander."

"It's clear, Brightside. Transport en route to take her to the embassy. Good work."

The hostage, still sobbing into his vest, starts to speak over her intense emotion. "W-who are y-you?"

"I'm with the US military. You're safe now, ma'am" After he walks her down the stairs, passing Southpark and Benny making their final sweep of the first floor, he makes his way outside and over to the truck, where the Commander is on the phone. He sits her down next to the Commander and pulls his k-bar out of his belt, cutting the bounds.

'Brightside! Go tell Snowman to get that damn power back on. Can't see where the fuck I'm goin!" Eddy shouts from a second story window.

He chuckles and runs off.

* * *

His eyes pop open and he sits up a bit.

He groans and falls back down to the bed. That's the second dream he's had about that mission. That was the most successful operation he went on with that squad, and he's having nightmares about it? To him, it didn't make sense. It just... it couldn't have been her that night. At the time, he didn't think anything of it. Never thought anything of anything. Military beat the second guesses out of him.

He sits up and swings his legs out. He's still drenched in sweat and the ceiling fan isn't doing a damn thing. He turns his head behind him and sees that it's just past three in the morning. His first class isn't until ten. He groans, knowing it would be fruitless to try and go back to sleep and stands up. He makes his way lethargically into the bathroom and flips on the light, splashing his face with cold water, then braces his hands on the sink, looking himself in the mirror. He looks tired, needs a shave maybe. He stares at himself for a moment, his eyes briefly tracing his patches of scare tissue. Shaking his head, he sighs and goes to change.

After running an extra two miles just because he had the time, he showers, takes a quick swig of the half empty bottle of Sailor Jerry's that's in the fridge and heads out. He wouldn't have, but his first class is Writing, and the person that's brought upon this wave of flashbacks, depriving him of sleep, is in this class. He's avoided her the past couple of days. Thinking that if he did that, they'd go away. He should have known better.

They never go away.

Or maybe it's just because he doesn't want to know who was on the other end of that phone call. He's tried to convince himself that it was just one of her parents, or maybe even her sister. But unless Bob came back after running out on them during their sophomore year of high school and somehow managed to make amends and she's been able to over look sixteen years of neglect and emotional torment, he knew it wasn't him. It could be her mother. Last he's heard of her, she was a 'functioning' alcoholic. Most likely it was her sister, if it was family at all. Olga ran off to New York after graduating boarding school to quote "find herself". That was in their junior year.

He doesn't trust himself enough if it was a boyfriend. Especially since she said love. The only time she told him she loved him was in her goodbye note. He spotted it while grabbing a pair of pants this morning. Started to reach for it but instead, settled for slamming the dresser drawer shut, grabbing his old, field jacket that's been with him since Iraq and heading out the door to campus.

It's close to nine forty-five when he pulls to a stop and steps out of his car. His apartment isn't too far from campus. Helga's living in the newly redone dorms. She's happy about it, shares a bathroom with just her roommate. She's... happy. With the little time spent with her, she has this happiness she carries with her. A brightness he never remembered seeing in her. And he doesn't know how long it will take to have him completely falling for her all over again. If he's not already.

Hell, who is he kidding. He never got over her to start with.

"Arnold!" He hears a voice call out to him. He looks up and sees her smiling and picking up her pace toward him. She has on a light pink polo shirt and her hair let down, well past her shoulders. He's stopped by her image; stunning, captivating, everything he remembers her being. Her smile widens and she lifts her arms out to him and hugs him. He doesn't want to let himself get used to that, but doesn't want her to stop either.

"Hey... Helga." He pauses to stop from accidentally uttering her old pet name again. She seemed a bit phased the last time he let it slip.

"I haven't seen you all week." She says when she steps back.

"I've been around." He says and stuff his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"Not around me. That's the point."

"It's a big campus, Helga." Her smile falls a bit and she turns to head into the building for class. Before he can shut himself up, it's out. "Helga." He calls out to her with her hand on the door. She turns, her smile small and probably fake. "Do you drink?"

Her smile widens a bit and she steps back over to him. "On occasion."

"It is Friday and we haven't exactly finished um... catching up."

"No..." She says with a slow shake of her head. "We haven't."

"There's a small bar by my apartment and the atmosphere would be made even better if you were there. Seven?"

"I think I can make seven." They smirk at each other and head inside for class.

All he can do is hope that he didn't just make a huge mistake.

* * *

He pulls to a stop just outside to door to her dorm building and waits, taking a deep breath. They'd made an agreement that this was a 'night out', and to dress accordingly. Although, he's in nothing more than black jeans and a black long sleeved shirt. He rolls down the window, plants his elbow on the ledge and waits. He doesn't know where this night is going to take them. A part of him wants it to end like it did five years ago, but he knows it won't. After all, that was five years ago.

He hears the door open to the dorms and looks. Once again, she succeeds in depriving him of thought. She comes out wearing a light blue shirt that's cut down lower than anything he's ever seen her in, and a matching skirt that comes just a little ways past the middle of her thighs. The last time he's seen her amazing legs... god.

She stops and looks over his care for a minute, giving it a weird look. She climbs in and looks over to him, squinting. "Where'd you get this?"

"Just suffice to say, I've saved up for it." Technically, he's not lying. Early 2005 Range Rover wouldn't exactly have people pegging him as a high roller.

He drives them just ten minutes to The Old Smoke. A hole in the wall, dark, smokey bar. Not a club, not a sports bar, just quiet, the way he needs it. He parks across the street and leads her in, holding the door open for her, and he just can't help it. Her scent is more potent tonight, and she looks more radiant than he ever remembers seeing her. "Arnold!" Ricky, the bartender calls. He was hoping Ricky would be working tonight.

"What's going on, Ricky?" He says and takes a seat at the bar in front of him. "Ricky, I'd like you to meet Helga." He says and presents his hand toward her. "She's an old... friend from high school." He corrects himself.

"Well, any gorgeous friend of Arnold's is a girl whose getting her first on the house. What'll it be, Helga?" Ricky asks and cracks open a Sam Adams and puts it in front of Arnold.

"Rum and Coke, please." She says with a smile. After Ricky hands her her drink, and she takes what looks like a hesitant sip, he wants to start flirting with her. Just like he used to when they first started dating back in high school. But he doesn't. Just looks away and takes another long swig of his beer. "So..." She begins.

He looks over and sees her grinning at him. "What?" He asks on somewhat of a chuckle.

"I told you a story of mine. You have to tell me one."

"Ha..." He half halfheartedly chuckles, simply to keep the mood light. "I suppose I do." He pauses to wait to her to offer him a way out. But she doesn't. Alright, there is one that he can tell her. It's one of the ones that still gives him nightmares. "My first tour, I was on a squad that was responsible for conducting terror sweeps. Basically, just going into someones home, ransack it looking for 'terror related contraband'," he says with air quotes, his beer still in hand, "then leave and go to the next house. We were just about done, when we heard the Apache open fire in the quad. They're these... helicopters with thirty millimeter cannons on them. I started toward the quad, but was told to hold position and wait for the all clear. I heard on the radio that a van had pulled up next to the bodies, then I heard them open up again. I was told there was still movement and to scope out the situation to confirm an all clear."

He pauses as the images of that day, along with the trauma, begin to trickle into his system.

"I started toward the bodies, and-" He stops to keep his voice from faltering. "And when I opened the door to the van... I saw the manged bodies two children." He hears her gasp, and bitterly thinks that he's not even to the good part. "Couldn't have been older than seven or eight." He decides to leave out the part of him vomiting at the sight. "But when I looked, I saw that one of them was still moving. So... I yelled on the radio for a medic, I picked the kid up in my arms and started running toward a house that we had swept. I put him down on the floor and shouted to get the medic. He couldn't even speak, didn't look at me. He was just shaking."

He stops and takes a long swing of his beer, holding it in his throat for a minute before he swallows it.

"He died in my arms two minutes later." He thinks she might have tears in her eyes. She hasn't said anything, letting him finish, just as he did with her. He blinks back the ones he has and continues. "Later we found out that the Apache gunner mistook a fathers camera for a gun. Worst part is he was an American citizen visiting family." He looks down to the bar after staring straight forward and begins to swallow his emotions, just as he's done since then. "So that's war for you. The part they don't tell you about on the news."

"Arnold, I..." She starts. He looks over to her and her eyes are starting to brim with tears. He can't figure out why though. "I didn't know." She says lowly and puts a hand on his forearm that's laying on the bar.

"Most people don't want to."

"How did-" She cuts herself off, but he looks back over to her, honestly curious as to what she was going to ask.

"What is it, Helga?" He asks softly.

She looks away, taking her hand away and putting it back on her glass. "How did you come back from that?"

He draws in a long breath and lets it out, deflating himself as much as he can. He looks back over to her, about to tell her that he never did, when his eye catches the door opening. "No way." He says and quickly slides off his stool. "Eddy?!"

The five foot eight Italian looks over to him, a smile breaking onto his face. "Brightside?!"

"Eddy!" He shouts, rushing him with open arms and hugging him. The two friends tightly embrace each other, laughing and shaking each other, slapping each other on the backs.

"God damn it, Brightside, what the hell are you doing here?" He says in his thick Brooklyn accent.

"I grew up here, man. Going to school on GI."

"Ahem..." He hears a broad throat clearing from behind him, snapping him back to what he was in the middle of.

"Oh!" He exclaims and steps aside and turns toward Helga. "Helga, this is Eddy Costello. We went through AIT together." He once again half-thruths. "Eddy, this is Helga Pataki. We-"

"Wait, you're tellin' me that you're _the_ Helga? The same one that-" Eddy is silenced by Arnold slamming his fist into his shoulder without Arnold moving his body. Arnold looks over to Eddy, silently telling him to shut the hell up about it. Eddy, seeing this, smiles and looks back over to Helga. "Nice to meet you, Helga." He says and shakes her hand.

"Likewise. So... Brightside..." Helga says, giving Arnold a cheshire grin, "There's a name I never came up with."

"I started getting called Brightside because I feel the need to remind people that it could be worse."

"Yeah, 'look at the bright side, fellas. we might be in the fuckin' desert, but at least we're here together.'" Eddy mocks. "Fuckin' ass!" He says and wraps his arm around Arnold, brotherly shaking him.

"What are you drinking tonight, Eddy?" Arnold says and starts back toward the bar.

He then hears Helga let out a small shriek and looks back toward the door, where she's practically prancing toward a guy who just walked in. Arnold's heart, knowing what he's witnessing, sinks. He sees Eddy look back over toward him, wide eyed and shocked. Probably knowing what Arnold said about Helga in the past. "You made it." He hears her say the guy whose shoulders she just placed her hands, and whose lips she just chastely kissed. Eddy puts his hand on his partners shoulder, gripping it tightly in his hand, probably knowing what it feels like. "Come on, I'll introduce you."

Arnold, frozen in place, heart thumping in his stomach, feeling like he's going to be sick, slumps down on a bar stool, watching Helga drag this... intruder... over to him and Eddy. Wearing a light blue button up shirt, slacks, standing three inches or more taller than her, an obviously fake smile, and his hand around her hip, is a person whom Arnold has never met, yet just ripped his life into shreds. "This is Arnold, the guy I told you about."

"Arnold, nice to meet you." He says and extends his hand. Arnold looks at it and hesitantly shakes it. "Helga just goes on about you."

"Does she?" He says past rising jealousy.

"Arnold, this is Roy. My boyfriend." She says with a proud smile. But while she's brimming from ear to ear, Arnold never remembers feeling like this. Like is life is over. "I hope you don't mind, Arnold, but Roy wanted to take me out to dinner tonight. I forgot to tell you, I'm sorry."

"It's fine. Go ahead." He forces.

Helga smiles and bounces on her feet. "Thanks Arnold. See you in class." She then takes Roy's hand and is out the door.

Eddy still hasn't let go of his friends shoulder. "What the fuck was that?" Eddy says and looks down to him.

"I-I uh..."

"You said that that was your girl. _Your_ girl! That she was the reason you haven't offed yourself yet! What the hell is she doin' with some dick licker like him?"

"She moved on, Eddy." He resigns and turns back to the bar.

Eddy sighs and pats his friend on the back. "Look, here's my number. Call me when that bombshell is back on your arm instead of his, hooah?" Eddy makes his exit, muttering as he goes.

Arnold just sighs, picks his bottle back up and puts it to his lips. "Hooah."

* * *

 **A/N: Those of you who've read the original can probably guess where I will take this. I'm going to put a different spin on it though. Introduce a new (old) side character in the next chapter, along with more background.**

 **Also, the story Arnold told is based on true events. You can look up Collateral Murder from wikileaks if you're interested in finding out more.**


	4. Chapter 4

The last two weeks had been hard. Harder than most he remembers.

She has someone else. Worse, she isn't afraid to be around him in public. It never bothered him that she was shy when it came to being affectionate in public when they were dating back in high school. When it was just them and she'd be sitting curled into his side with her notebook open in her lap, scribbling away stanzas of poems she thought he never read, she let him see a side of her that made him fall for her with a quickness.

But now, with Roy, they seem all over each other. He would always grab her hand, or have his hand on her hip when they were standing next to each other. He didn't think anything of it until he saw Roy pull her into his side a little too forcefully to be playful. That was four days ago when he ran into them just before writing class. Now, he's looked for them, watched for behavioral ticks that would affirm his suspicions.

It's hard for him to watch though. Pains him on a level that he hasn't felt in a long time. The way she smiles at him, the way her laugh fills him when she laughs at Roy's stupid jokes. Roy doesn't even seem her type. Then again, to him, Helga's type was always just him. Roy on the other hand, always wears button up dress shirts, dress shoes, slacks. He hasn't bothered to figure out what he does for a living. It would take talking to him to do that, and he doesn't trust himself enough to do that with out destroying his currently fragile relationship with Helga. She doesn't know it, but he's on the verge of running.

But now, he's just stepping out of his car and is making his way through the quad to writing class. He's hung over again. He knows he shouldn't drink during the week but it hurts too damn much. And Eddy was right. Thinking of Helga, of that night they shared at their graduation party, that's what stopped him from following through with it. He's gotten close, but never done it. He would just imagine how hurt she might have been if she found out that he had ended his own life, didn't want her blaming herself if she ever did find out.

He's walking up the quad, his head still throbbing and his focus down on his shoes. "Hey Arnold." Her voice says softly, but happily.

His only response is a lift of the head and a small smile, no words, and a turn to head into the building.

"Something wrong, Arnold? You look sick." She says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

His breath catches briefly at the human contact. "Just didn't get much sleep last night." He says, still not looking at her and practically shoves her off and heads inside. He takes a seat in the back, nursing his head in his hands, and class comes and goes. Two hours later, the professor dismisses them and he puts his text book back in his bag very lethargically and heaves it back over his shoulder. Not as heavy as the ones the Rangers made him carry, but he wasn't hungover then.

"Arnold?" He knows that voice, but he doesn't trust himself enough to talk to her. Especially in his current state.

"Hey Helga." He says in a tired voice.

"Is something wrong?" She asks, sounding like she wants a serious answer. He looks over to her and she has an arched brow, her text book hugged against her chest almost protectively, and with the look in her big blue eyes, he can't shake her off this time.

He lets out a long breath and starts walking towards the door, and she starts following next to him. "I've just been having a hard time with..." He stops when he looks over to her and his eye catches that of someone glaring at him from outside in the hall. He has his arms crossed and a flaming look in his eyes at the sight of Arnold talking to her. He looks Roy dead in the eye and smirks. "With adjusting back into civilian life. Bad memories is all." Not completely lying.

"Oh..." She says and looks down to the small space between them. It's just then that he notices that they no more than a foot apart from each other. "Well, if you ever need to talk, Arnold, you have my number. You can always call me, any time."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Roy quickly shove off the wall and make his way toward the door way. "Can I?" He asks in a way that says he's telling her.

"Of-" She's stopped by Roy coming up next to her and putting his arm around her and his hand gripping her shoulder a little too tight to be a sign of affection. "Roy... Hey, sorry, um..." She looks back over to Arnold shakes her head a bit. "I'll talk to you later, okay Arnold?"

He just smiles and nods. He looks Roy in the eye when he turns Helga toward the door, giving him a look that says he's not buying into whoever it is he's trying to act like. Writing was his only class today, and the past minute just proved to him that he needs to do something. He makes his way outside and takes out the address of someone whom he hopes can help. After all, she owes him a favor or two.

Getting to her apartment takes about ten minutes, she doesn't live that far from where he does. Nicer part of town though. He parks on the street and steps out, looking at the building that has the address in gold letters above the door. This must be it. He walks in, going up to the doorman he sees sitting behind a desk. "Hey, I'm looking to get up to the pent house."

"Is Ms. Lloyd expecting you?"

"I'm an old friend from P.S. 120, we graduated together. Do you mind if I just go up myself? I kind of want to surprise her."

The doorman smiles and takes his keys, walking around the desk and over to the elevator against the wall. "Take this up and go down the hall, door on the left."

"Thanks." He says and steps inside. He takes the elevator up four floors and stops at a hallway. Leave it to her to end up in a pent house with her own private elevator. He stops at the door at the end of the short hallway and knocks on the door. He hears someone approaching the door, and he's a little exited to see her. They had a lot of fun in high school.

The door opens and she stands a gasp when she meets his eye. "Arnold..."

"Hey Rhonda."

A smile explodes onto her face and in the next second, he's stumbling back from her jumping on him.

Him and Rhonda dated for almost a year in their junior year of high school. Despite a difference in social cliques, class, he thought that they made a pretty good couple. And he did count himself lucky to be dating the girl who was considered the hottest girl in school. The guys would constantly hound him for details. Sure, he had them, but he was a gentleman in a past life. She's still very pretty. Great body, but he's just not attracted to her. From the research he's done, she went to business school right after high school and now is a day trader, doing very well at it. He doesn't know what kept her in Hillwood. She's not married, single as far as he knows. Probably just family.

"Mmm, oh my god." She says and steps back down. "I had heard you were back in town, but I didn't think you'd actually come to see me."

I'm sorry to say I didn't stop by for a social visit." He says, surprised by the fact that his hands took so long to pry themselves off her hips. Maybe he does find her just a little attractive. He always did have a thing for short hair. And the one thing Rhonda has kept over the years is her hair due.

She smiles and turns back inside. "Well, come on in. Can I get you something?"

He makes his way inside, scanning her apartment as he follows her. High ceilings, picture windows, white leather sofa and two matching chairs. Pulpury everywhere. Not that many pictures around. But still, it's a very nice apartment. "Nice place, Rhonda."

"Yeah, I like it." She says and pours a cup of coffee and hands it to him. "So last I heard, you were on some top secret government hush hush."

He takes a sip of his coffee, surprised at how good it tastes. He shouldn't be surprised that she knows what he's been doing with his time, after all, that's why he came over in the first place. "You can say that."

He looks up after a minute of not getting a response and finds her looking at him with a bitten bottom lip. She shakes her head and hums. "Why did I ever let you go?" She says, still looking him up and down.

"You didn't. I dumped you after you started cheating on me with the Goodyear blimp."

She laughs once, but quickly swallows it and starts defending herself. "Hey, you know I had a thing for Harold since we were kids."

"The guy picked on me more than Helga did." He argues. "And besides, you owe me after what happened with you and him."

Rhonda sighs and looks down. "I suppose I do. You know, you spoiled me Arnold." She says and walks past him just like the old Rhonda he used to know would do and into the living room. "So, what is it you need, sweetie?" She says and sits down on the couch."

"It's about Helga."

"Ahhh..." She says, lifting her head and smiling a cheshire smile. "So _that's_ who it is. You need help with the girl who stole you away from me?"

"Rhonda..." He warns her.

"I'm kidding!" She defends herself, and he can tell that she's being honest. He could always tell when she was lying. "What has she been up to, anyway?" She says over another sip of her coffee.

"Right after graduation, she joined the Peace Corps, and they flew her over to Tanzania for four years, then to Ethiopia for one." He doesn't trust his tone of voice, and fears Rhonda picked up on it.

"Mhm, and what aren't you telling me?" She says, not bothering to look at him, knowing she can get it out of him.

Tensing up, he picks the best way to tell her. "Suffice to say, I might have been on the squad that rescued her from Ethiopian rebels trying to ransom her off and sell her into slavery."

Rhonda audibly gasps, and she's probably being honest.

"I'm not allowed to say anymore than that." That he's being honest about. Part of him thinks that it's a relief to not have any restrictions with someone, but most of him wishes it was with Helga. Why she has this hold on him, he will probably never know. But with Rhonda, he feels like he can tell her everything, probably because she can find out anyway even if he were to keep it to himself. She was always able to get word on something. She always knew who to talk to. He hopes she still has that ability. "But it's not her I need you help with. It's her boyfriend."

"Boyfriend?!" She says, surprised that Helga could take anyone's arm but his. She knew how much I meant to Helga back in the day. "Helga Pataki is dating someone that isn't you?"

"Please don't remind me, Rhonda." He says in a low vice.

"Well, what is it you need? Want me to beat him up for you?" She says cheekily.

"I just need you to find out who he really is. Helga said that she met him during her last year in Tanzania, but guys like him don't join the Peace Corps for a tax write off. And the way he is with her... he's always on her. Like, just this morning. I was talking to Helga after a class we had together, and he storms in and puts his arm around her and pulls her into him. And I don't need as a sign of affection. And she didn't even argue with him. She just gave in." He stops himself before he gets too deep in memories. "Anyway, I need you to get what you can on him."

Rhonda smiles and nods. "For you, sweetie, I can do that."

He smiles back and stands up. "Thanks Rhonda."

"What's this guys name?" She asks, picking up a small pad of paper and a pen.

"Roy Connell."

"Connell, Connell... why does that sound familiar?" She says to herself as she writes down the name. "Well, I'll see what I can get." She says and puts the pad down, and walks over to the door to see him out. She steps up to him and hugs him again, and he responds in kind. "You know," She starts and leans back, "you were always the one I let get away." She says with some serious emotion behind it.

" _She's_ the one _I_ let get away, Rhonda."

* * *

"Ha, then Sargent was like, 'Pvt. Shortman! What the hell are you doing?'" He says, laughing and lifting his beer up to his lips again.

"Ha, and I was sitting in my bunk trying to sleep, and you're over there trying to do pull ups on the tent supports."

Eddy met Arnold at the bar later that night. He hasn't had the chance to catch up with his partner since he got out. Now, they've spent the last two hours just drinking and telling stories of what they've been through together. It's the first time Arnold's felt content. Just laughing and drinking with his friend. He left Rhonda's about eleven, on the promise that she would do some digging. But now, he has some time to kill until tomorrow afternoon when he stops by her place again. He stopped by Eddy's place about two hours ago and invited him out to the bar and they've been here ever since, a chance to get his mind off everything.

"Man, I'm glad I'm out though." Arnold says.

"You don't miss it?" Eddy says, motioning Ricky for another beer.

"Hell no. Why, do you?"

"All I'm saying is that you don't seem to happy to be out."

"It's just-" He's cut off by the door to the bar opening and an all too familiar face walk in. He follows close behind her and she looks forward, seeing him with Eddy at the bar. "Helga..." He says, not at all excited to see her right now.

"Arnold. Hey, I wasn't expecting to see you here tonight." She says and stops next to him, not sitting down in the empty stool next to him.

He's drunk, irritated that she's here when he's trying to get his mind off of her, and pissed off that she brought her new boyfriend to fly in his face. "I practically live here." He says and takes the last, long swig of his beer and motions Ricky for another one.

"Roy, can you give us a minute?" She asks him, as if asking his permission. He looks over to Roy and sees him eyeing him, as if warning him of something. Arnold audibly chuckles at him and shakes his head, turning back to the bar as Roy walks away. "Arnold, you're starting to worry me. This isn't you." She says, sounding as if she's honestly worried about him. But he's not buying it. "What's really going on, Arnold?" She asks and puts a hand on his shoulder.

He looks at her hand and turns back to the bar, lifting his bottle up to his lips again. "Sorry Helga, but I don't date girls who leave me lying in bed and disappear for five years." He says bitterly. He even hears Eddy 'ooo' next to him.

Her hand is off his shoulder in a flash. "Arnold, I-"

"Save it, Helga." He says, whipping over to glare at her. "You say this isn't me? Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you recognize yourself before you say that. The Helga I loved would have told that ass hole to get his hands off her the minute he tried anything."

"Is that what this is about?" She says, anger starting to seep into her voice.

"I've been waiting for you ever since you ran away, Helga. I guess I can't expect the same respect. So do me a favor and the next time you run away, have the guts to say goodbye to my face."

The next thing he's aware of, he's watching her storm out the bar and a sharp pain in his jaw. What did he just do? She just had to come in here tonight when he's seven beers in. He shakes it off, pretending that it doesn't bother him and picks up his bottle off the bar and chugs it.

"You cool, Brightside?" Eddy asks cautiously.

"Just get me another beer."

* * *

If she wants to run off with some other guy to show off, then he doesn't care anymore. Screw her. He's wasted the last five years of his life waiting to hear from her. Well he's done now. He's done with her.

The elevator door opens and he stumbles out. He puts his hand against the wall to steady himself, his legs feeling like they're on their own. He leans against the wall and knocks on the door, hard.

A few minutes later, the door opens and he stumbles forward, slamming his lips on hers.

To even his drunken surprise, she responds.

* * *

 **A/N: I always pictured Arnold and Rhonda dating in high school, as kind of a precursor to him and Helga. To mature him in relationship terms and such. And since I put Rhonda in the last version, and in msot other stories I've written (Except for When the Sun Rises if I'm correct), I thought I'd continue the trend.  
**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Wow, if I knew all I needed to do to get more reviews was to piss you guys off, I would have done it a long time ago.**

 **I guess I didn't make my reasons clear enough. I do not ship Arnold and Rhonda. I just mean that I always saw them dating, but it not really meaning anything. As just a means to mature Arnold in the world of relationships. And I read a lot of people say that Rhonda was nothing but a selfish spoiled brat, and mostly, I would agree with you. However, my main point of reference is Rhonda goes broke. Sure, she was moping around for most of the episode, but by the end of it, she made the best of a bad situation. I never said that Arnold and Rhonda made a good couple, or had a healthy relationship, which I explain in this next chapter.**

 **This ones a bit shorter, but this is basically the chapter that opens the curtain. Hope you guys like it, and for those of you who don't know my writing, SPOILER: Arnold and Helga _always_ end up together in my stories. Call me closed minded.**

* * *

He feels his head swim heavily and has no choice but to stop from trying to open his eyes and relax back into his bed. He groans and lifts his weak arm and clumsily slaps it against his forehead, still throbbing and pounding with every pulse of blood that runs through his brain. He doesn't even remember what happened last night. He groans again and slowly opens his eyes. Once he scans the room he's in, he realizes he's not at his own apartment.

With this realization, he shoots up right. He's been here before, he can't remember who lives here though. He must have really let himself go last night. He's still in the clothes he remembers wearing yesterday, he even still has his shoes on. "Holy shit..." He groans heavily and puts his hands back on his head. If he went out and... god, this time he might actually kill himself.

"Well, look whose up." A shrill voice says.

He looks off to his side and see's a girl clad in dark red, silk pajamas stroll out of the other room. "Rhonda?"

"Here, drink this." She says and hands him a clear, fizzing glass.

He doesn't waste time arguing and downs it. He takes a breath and lets the glass go limp in his hand. "What happened last night?" He asks, cradling his head again.

"Wow, you must have really been out of it." She says and grabs her laptop off the table behind her and sits in the chair adjacent to the sofa he just woke up on. "You stumbled up to my door at midnight last night and kissed me like you were in a cheap romantic comedy."

"I _what?"_ He kissed her? How the hell did he end up here last night? He looks over to Rhonda and she's just grinning as she looks down to her laptop screen. "Rhonda, please don't tell me we..."

"What, slept together?" She says. She always was shameless. "Honey, if we did, you wouldn't be waking up on my couch."

"Uhhh..." He groans again, this time in relief. "I'm sorry, Rhonda. I guess I uh... kind of let myself go last night."

"Don't get me wrong, it took me a minute or two to work up to will power to push you off of me." He looks over to her again and she as a sly grin on her face. "I almost forgot what an amazing kisser you are."

"Rhonda, please stop." He warns her and sets the glass down on the table in front of him simply so he can have the support of both of his hands for his still swimming head. It isn't until now that he remembers that their relationship was mainly physical. He was never really emotionally invested in being with her. That's probably why he didn't really go through a phase of depression when he broke up with her. "Anyway, I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Well, considering that you pissed of the girl you're in love with so much that she slapped you, I'd guess that your drunken self tried to prove a point to itself. Trying to move of with someone else, you know. I'm flattered, Arnold, I really am, but I'm not that selfish."

"You know, the Rhonda I broke up with would have gone through with it." He says and sits back.

"Well, maybe I grew up!" She defends herself. "We're not teenagers anymore, Arnold. And I know how much you mean to Helga, and how much she means to you. Stepping into the middle of that anymore than I already am is drama I don't need right now. And coming from me, you should know how much that says."

She's right. She always did want the scope of everything that was happening with everyone. She always wanted drama. Or maybe she's just reasoning away the fact that she didn't want to take advantage of him. He always knew that she was a good person, but didn't want to admit to it. She may be selfish, but she has had her moments of pure heart over the years. "Well... thanks, then."

"Speaking of stepping in the middle of things that aren't my business, I did some digging on Helga's new beau." She says and moves over to sit next to him on the sofa, setting her laptop down on the coffee table. "Turns out you were right to be suspicious."

"What do you mean?"

She clicks her laptop and pulls up Roy's photo. "Roy Connell, son of Robert Connell. You might know him as the former president to Sunset Bank, here in Hillwood."

"What do you mean former?"

"Robert Connell died in a car accident involving a drunk driver about six years ago. But here's the thing; I talked to a few people, turns out that the driver's blood alcohol content was only point oh two."

"That's not even buzzed."

"Exactly. So I dug a bit deeper, finding out that the driver was sentenced to ten years for man slaughter in the third degree, with bale set at half a million dollars. And guess who paid the bill."

"Roy..." The more Rhonda told him, the more pictures he sees flashing in his mind of her, sitting in the corner of that dark, dank room in Ethiopia.

"Mhm, and now that daddy dearest was out of the way, Roy became acting president of Sunset Bank, and started specializing in business loans for small and independent businesses. But here's the thing, the banks been under investigation by both the IRS and the FBI for the past two years."

"Why's that?"

"From what I can find out, the businesses that he started loaning to didn't trace back to anyone. Almost none of them existed."

"He was laundering money?" How the hell did Helga get involved with a money launderer?

"That's what I think. He probably offers to take in their money through personal shell accounts and move it back to them through business loans to clean it."

"How did he end up in Tanzania with Helga, then?"

"Roy may have had daddies business, but didn't have his expertise. About two years ago, it starting hitting the fan when Roy started accepting rival clients. His main clients got the word, and put his picture on a dart board. So Roy probably decided to disappear."

"Why is he back then?"

"Probably because the business that had Sunset's largest loan was shut down by the FBI and everyone on the client list rounded up. With the coast clear, he came back, with your girl on his arm."

"Why hasn't this guy been investigated by the FBI because of all of this?"

"Oh, he's been investigated, just not by the FBI. By HPD, and this is the part that concerns you, for this." She says and taps a few keys on her laptop, and a picture pops up that starts making his blood boil. "This is Barbara. She was Roy's girlfriend whenever he was attending business school. She had to have twelve stitches above her right eye, her jaw wired back into place, and nursed two broken ribs from 'falling down the stairs'. HPD suspected Roy, but could never pin it on him because one, Barbra had a history of alcohol abuse, and two, he was able to provide two witnesses who say that they were with him at the time it happened."

He's afraid. Afraid mostly of what he might do when he sees him, afraid that he won't be able to stop himself, and mostly he doesn't want himself to. This guy is going to suffer for what he's doing to Helga. From not only stealing her away from him, but tricking her into something that she didn't want. He knows Helga, she doesn't want him. He's going to make him sorry he ever touched her.

Stop, just stop. His main concern needs to be with protecting Helga, not beating the shit of Roy. It's one of his codes, seek justice, not vengeance. "You have to show this to Helga." Rhonda says after a minute of silence, waiting for him to contemplate what he's just learned.

"She hates me right now, Rhonda."

"Hey!" Rhonda exclaims, grabbing his attention away from the laptop. "This is not about your relationship with Helga anymore. This is about her safety!" She says seriously. "You want that to be Helga?" She says and points at the laptop. "Because give it enough time, and it's going to be if you don't do something."

"I know." He says, finally deciding to act, and how he should go about it. "I have to show her all this."

"Everything you need," She starts and pulls out a thumb drive from the side of the laptop, "is right here."

He takes it from her and stands up. "Thanks, Rhonda. This uh... this means a lot."

"Well, considering what happened to you last night, I don't think that that tattoo of yours is entirely accurate." He chuckles and looks down at his left forearm. "No emotion isn't exactly what I'd say to describe what happened to you last night, because you after I had pushed you off, you started blabbing on about how sorry you where."

"I was drunk, Rhonda. And besides, it's just a military tattoo." He's had that tattoo since his first leave right before Ranger school. Long enough he sometimes forgets it's even there. He stands up and stretches and gets his mind back into the set that it needs to be. "I screwed up, Rhonda."

"Just... remember something, Arnold." Rhonda says and stands up next to him. "If you kissed her anything like you kissed me last night, it must have been hard as hell for her to leave the way she did."

There are certain moments when a new perspective is needed. It's been awhile since he's read her good-bye note. Because that's basically what she said.

* * *

He decides to head back to his apartment before heading back to campus to find Helga at her dorm room. Saturday is the day that she spends the day catching up on assignments that she's neglected. After taking a shower and getting something solid into his system, he gets dressed, coming across the folded up, crumpled piece of notebook paper that he knows so well.

He has time, and maybe reading it now will make him understand what was going through her mind. So, he swallows and gently picks up the paper, unfolding it just as gently.

 _Dear Arnold,_

 _You stole my heart when we first met, but I couldn't bare to ask for it back in person. These past months, being with you, they've been amazing. Never before have I been able to be so free and open with anyone before. And never before did I ever think I could love you anymore than I already did. Over the past couple years, I had decided that what I had was just a crush, a fantasy to live forever in my dreams, but that all ended when you came up to my locker and asked me out._

 _I've tried to come up with what was going through your head at the time, but when a dream comes true, you don't usually ask too many questions. I can only guess that you somehow felt sorry for me, maybe. But I dream that you maybe thought I was interesting to talk to in English class, or maybe even kind of pretty, and if any of it were to be true, it would make leaving you even harder than it already is._

 _You gave me a chance I've never had before, Arnold. A chance to feel loved. To feel wanted, adored, cherished, to feel... human. Tonight was amazing, and I wouldn't want my first time to be any different, or with anyone else. I know that you'll probably look back on it and say that it wasn't the best you've had, but there's a part of me that says you can't deny the chemistry we shared. I don't know why I'm trying to defend myself, now of all times._

 _I don't know why I'm leaving yet, or entirely where I'm going, or how I'll get there, or how long I'll be there, or even if I'll come back at all. But looking back on these past few months being in a relationship with you, it made me realize I don't know who I am without you. And I need to find out. I need to find out who I am on my own. I need to find out if I'm anything but a little girl with a crush. But I know that no matter how much time passes, there's one thing I'm not strong enough to let go._

 _I will always love you, Arnold_

He rereads the last line a few more times. It one of the few things that can make him smile. Mainly because he can hear her say it.

He takes a deep breath, gently folds the note back up and puts it back in the drawer of his dresser. He grabs the flash drive on his way out and knows know what he needs to do, and what his main concern is; Helga.

He needs to keep her safe.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Another fast update! What can I say, I'm bored with everything else and didn't want to keep you guys waiting too long.**

 **Also, seeing a lot of conflicting reviews about not understanding Helga's behavior and what not, but just remember, something like being held hostage by a group of Ethiopian slavers for four months can change a person. So can two tours in Iraq. That's why I originally named this story what I named it. That's the whole point of this story, changes!**

* * *

He's nervous. Doesn't know what he's going to tell her. But he has a plan. He hopes he can get through to her before she gets hurt. If Roy hurts her, he might not be able to hold himself back.

He zips up his grey hoodie and steps out of his car, making his way through the dorm parking lot. It's still early in the afternoon, hopefully she's still her dorm. Reading her note helped calm him down. He knows what to focus on, protecting her. Making sure she's safe. He knows she left for a reason, and understands that it was hard for her to leave the way she did. From what Eddy told him, what he said to her was just lashing out in anger that she came back with someone else. He wishes he hadn't let it slip that he was in love with her when she left. He never got to tell her, and it was something he always regretted most apart from letting her go in the first place.

He opens the door and quickly makes his way up the stairs and up to the third floor. The dorms are surprisingly quiet for a weekend. He takes a deep breath when he stops outside her door. Lifting his nervous hand, he knocks and anxiously waits, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. The door opens and his heart stops. She's wearing a baggy sweatshirt, an old pair of jeans, her hair undone in a low pony tail, and a blank, emotionless look on her face. "Hey..."

"What do you want, Arnold?" She says, the tone of her voice telling him that she's trying to end this conversation as quickly as possible.

"I need to talk to you."

"I don't think I want to hear it, Arnold." She says and slowly crosses her arms tightly across her chest.

"Please, Helga." He says, hoping she believes his honesty. "I'm sorry. I was out of line last night." He shrugs.

"Arnold, I can't hear this right now." She says, quickly turning back into her dorm room.

"Helga, wait-" He begs and quickly grabs her wrist to stop her. But when his hand makes contact, he hears her suck in a sharp breath in through clenched teeth, wrenching her wrist away from his grasp that immediately loosened when he heard her hiss. He stills himself, his blood already starting to pulse through his veins with anger. But he pushes it down and gently reaches down with one hand and softly lifts her wrist up and sliding the baggy sleeve of her sweater up her wrist, his hand ghosting across her warm skin. She doesn't flinch, doesn't rip it away, knowing what he's looking for.

His hands gently cradling her forearm, making sure that despite the fury he feels trying to flex every single muscle, he doesn't hurt her. What he's staring at is exactly what he was afraid of. In the middle of her bottom forearm, a large dark blotch of bruised skin circles her wrist, the impression of a forceful hand can clearly be seen. "Helga."

"It was just an accident." She quickly defends and pulls her wrist away, hiding the bruise under her sleeve, and hiding her eyes by looking away when she speaks.

He pauses, letting his hands fall to his sides. "I want you to look me in the eye and say that." Her eyes first glance in his direction, her head still remaining turned off to the side. "Look me in the eye and tell me that it was just an accident."

"He didn't mean it." She says in a voice so small he can barely hear her.

"No?" He leans his head toward her, but she still isn't making eye contact. "Helga, look me in the eye and tell me you don't want out."

She glances over to him again, and he can clearly see her eyes brimming with tears. When she finally turns to look at him fully, he knows how truly scared she is. "Arnold, I-I..." Her voice falters.

"Helga," He starts, taking a slow step forward and cautiously puts his hands on her arms, "tell me you're not scared." She nods her head away, her lower lip quivering. "You tell me to leave and I'll go. I'll stay out of your life if that's what you really want. But it has to be _you_ that says it. Not him telling you to."

"Arnold..." She starts, looking toward him again, "I..." She says, her eyes breaking away from his for a moment before they find his again, "I'm scared."

He lets out a slow breath and takes another step forward, wrapping her in his arms, with her bringing her arms up and curling them up in his chest. He commits one hand to running up and down her back and he can feel emotion overwhelming her from her wrenching her fists in his hoodie. He moves his head and gently places his lips against her hair, he remembers that kissing her hair puts her at ease. "Helga." He says and softly urges her back with hands on her arms. She lifts her head off his shoulder, sniffles, and reveals red rimmed eyes. "You're safe with me, Helga."

"Arnold, what do I do?" She asks, her hands still gripping the front of his hoodie.

"I want you to go to my apartment. Eddy's outside waiting in his car, he'll take you there. He'll stay with you until I come back."

"Where are you going?"

"I have something I need to take care of." He says and starts rubbing her arms again, hoping that she won't try to stop him. "You can use my computer, take a long shower if you want, find something in the fridge, take a nap, just settle in and wait for me. Okay?"

Helga looked away when he said he had something to take care of, and hasn't looked back up yet. And he's worried that she'll say she can handle it on her own. But he hopes that he got through to her considering she openly sought comfort with him. "Roy, he..."

"You don't have to worry about him anymore, Helga. I'll take care of it. Hey-" He says and gently puts his fingers under her chin and leads her to look up to him again. "Do you trust me?"

She looks him in the eye, doesn't respond, instead nods a few times. He smiles, wraps his arm around and leads out downstairs. Eddy's parked right behind him and is waiting in his car. He leads her over to the passenger side, hugged tightly into his side the whole way, and he opens the car door and she climbs into Eddy's SUV. He closes the door and moves over to the other side, pulling the thumb drive out of his pocket. "Get on my computer and look over these files. Are you still on good terms with your ex?"

"Nancy? I can call her if I need something, if that's what you mean."

"Send her everything on that thumb drive. If she's as smart as you said she is, she'll know what to do with it." Eddy nods and starts the car. "Eddy." Arnold says before he rolls up his window. "Keep her safe."

"You got it, Bright side. When are you getting back?"

"I don't know. I have to play this by ear."

"Hope you know what you're doing, Arnold." Eddy says and pats him on the shoulder. Arnold turns and heads for his car ahead of Eddy's.

"Me too."

* * *

He checks the clock on the radio of his car and see's he's been waiting for about twenty minutes. His heart beats calm, his mind is focused and he knows what he has to do. He's parked at the end of a street of apartment buildings and is waiting. He pulled his current address, made a call to his bank and faked his way into getting his schedule for the day. He's due out the door in about five minutes.

His eyes have been trained on his door for the past twenty minutes, waiting for him to walk out. He sees the door open and then him walking out in a dress shirt and blazer. He grabs the dark baseball cap on the seat, puts it on low over his eyes and gets out of the car, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and hunching is shoulders forward. He walks quickly down the street. There's an ally in between every building, and he needs to get him in one of those.

He's just a few feet away from him, and he goes for it. As Roy passes, Arnold quickly grabs onto his collar, spins him around and tosses him into the alley next to them. He stumbles and falls into a pair of metal trash cans and rolls onto his back, and Arnold starts toward him. He sees Roy reach into jacket with his hand and knows what he's going for. He almost laughs. Roy pulls out his gun and Arnold takes his right leg and kicks it across the alley, then pinning his wrist into the ground with his boot.

He kneels into Roy's chest, grabs into his collar, and sends his right fist hard into his jaw once, twice, three, four, five times, each hit getting harder and stronger, the groans coming from him getting louder and harder each time. He raises his fist to send it down across his jaw again, but stops when Roy's head falls back, dazed. He lets out his breath and stands up. Stepping over him, pressing his weight down onto the wrist he had pinned, hearing him groan sharply at the pain, he walks over to the gun he kicked out of his hand and picks it up. He never did like glocks.

He releases the clip and slips it into his pocket, then racks the slide and lets the bullet fall into his palm, sliding it into his pocket with the clip. He turns around, seeing Roy still writhe limply roll around on the ground. He walks over to him and looms over him. When Roy looks up, Arnold lifts the gun, aiming it directly at his forehead, making sure he's staring down the barrel.

"No, no, no no no-" Roy begins begging, "no no no _no no!_ " He stops when the gun clicks.

Arnold kneels back down, still holding the gun to him and pulls him up by the collar, blood running down Roy's nose and his teeth stained with blood and his eye already starting to swell. "You touch Helga again, and I'll make you wish this gun was loaded."

Roy, his chest heaving and face battered, "Is that a threat?" He says, acting as if he's not scared.

Arnold lifts Roy up closer to him, clenches his teeth and looks him in the eye. "It's a promise."

He throws Roy back to the ground and walks down the alley, opposite the way his car is. He lifts the gun, racks the slide back, flicks the switch next to the safety and slides the slide off. He tosses the grip into a passing dumpster, takes out the barrel and the slide into a dumpster on the other side of the alley. He stops, unzips his hoodie and tosses it into the metal trash can at the end of the alley, then slips off the cotton gloves he was wearing, walks out and puts them into the trash can next to the bus stop, along with the black baseball cap.

He takes a deep breath, looking down at his knuckles, seeing them bright red and cut. He lets out the breath and slips his hands into the pockets of his jeans and makes his way around the block and back to his car.

* * *

Getting back to his apartment takes about fifteen minutes, and now it's around four o'clock. He makes his way up, and hears the TV going inside his apartment from the hall way. He opens the door and sees Eddy sitting in the corner of the couch, watching a football game. He looks over and nods. "Finally, what'd you do, have a god damn tea party?"

"Where's Helga?" He asks seriously and shuts the door.

He lifts his head toward his bedroom door. "She's been in there the whole time."

He walks up to his bedroom door, stopping before going in. Instead, he lifts his hand and knocks softly, cursing himself for a split second for forgetting his injured knuckles. "Helga?" After not getting a response, he reaches for the knob, "Helga, are you okay?" He opens the door, finds the light on and her curled up on his bed, her eyes shut and one of his pillows hugged up against her chest. He smiles and quietly walks in, taking out one of the thermal blankets from his closet and puts it over her. She's safe.

He walks back out, quietly shutting his bedroom door behind him and walks into the bathroom, washing his hand off, then grabbing the gauze from the medicine cabinet, then out into the living room and sits down on the opposite side of the couch from Eddy, starting to wrap his hand. "You send the files?"

"Nancy said she'll take a look at them and run them up the chain and get back to me. From what I saw from those files, you were right to want an eye kept on her."

"If anything ever happened to her, Eddy, I'd..." He wants to tell him that it is a very real possibility that it was her that they saved that day in Ethiopia, but decides to keep it to himself. She's safe now, and to him, that's all that matters. "Did she say anything?"

"Not really. Just came inside, wandered around a bit. After about ten minutes, she went into your bedroom and never came out."

He nods and finishes wrapping his hand. "Thanks, Eddy."

"Well, I'm heading out, Bright side. You know where to find me."

"Yeah, thanks again, Eddy. I owe you one."

Eddy leaves, leaving Arnold sitting on the couch with the girl he loves safe in the next room, fast asleep.

He hopes Nancy can help them out. He wouldn't have gone after Roy without going to her first. Eddy's ex-wife is an FBI financial investigator. Eddy met her during their days on the squad, part of their civilian contractors team. After that, she joined up with the FBI. Their marriage didn't last long, but they both agreed it was for the best. And if anyone can link Roy to his banks money laundering, it would be her.

Arnold lets out a long breath, his hand running through his short hair. He takes out the clip from Roy's gun and puts it down onto the table, along with the content of his back pocket, forty dollars in cash and a small pocket knife, and the picture of her he's carried with him for five years. He stops and stares at it. He hasn't seen her smile that genuinely since that first day in class, when she jumped up and wrapped her arms around him for the first time in five years.

He leans his head back, shuts his eyes, and relaxes in the knowledge that at least she's safe.

* * *

 **A/N: One thing I always regretted in the original was the fight scene. It was based off of the basketball scene in the first Expendables movie. Not all that realistic. This one was based loosely off of a scene from Fringe, during the first season if anyone has watched it. Hope you guys liked it.**


	7. Chapter 7

It's hot. One month into his first tour, he'd thought he would be used to it. But the day he gets used to it here is the day he ends up dead.

"We got word from some locals of some activity here, Brightside." Sgt Coleman says to him, jogging up next to him as he walks back to the rest of his unit, getting ready to head back to the FOB. "Brass wants us to do another sweep."

"Another one?" He says, keeping the whining tone to himself, opting instead of it being a simple question.

"Won't take that long, Private. We're just concentrating on the next-" He feels his body lock with the sound of the air being cut, the warm splatter of blood against his face, blurring his glasses. His ears are ringing and it isn't until an explosion knocks him on the ground that he's able to react. He looks to his left and sees the vacant eyes of one of his commanding officers staring back at him, his neck blown open.

"Shortman! Take cover!" Someone yells over rapid gun fire. The ground around him rocks, sand and dust shooting up from the ground around him as bullets hit around him. He quickly clamors to his feet, grabbing the stock of his rifle and falling to cover behind a wall just as another bullet takes a chuck of the edge off.

He takes a few slow breaths, relaxing his heart as another explosion goes off up the street. He looks across the street and sees his unit taking cover in the alley across from him. "You got eyes on the sniper?!" He yells over the gun fire.

"Twelve o'clock high, roof top!"

He hears some loud voices yelling in Arabic down the street as Sgt Roland lays out short bursts of fire. "I need cover! I'm getting Coleman!"

"Hold position, Shortman!" Roland yells.

"I'm not leaving him!"

Eddy moves from behind Sgt Roland, laying on the ground and laying out fire down the street. Shortman is quick to react, knowing they can't keep cover fire down for long. Their guns can't handle this dust. He strides out, siting the roof top a hundred yards ahead. He gets to Coleman, slinging his rifle around and then picking up Coleman over his shoulder, then moving to the alley in front of him as quick as he can.

"Come on, come on, come on!" Some one from his squad yells, indistinct over the sound of the fire ringing in his ears.

One more step, and he feels an intense, sharp pain in his side and himself hit the ground. He groans loudly as his squad pulls on his flak jacket to get him to cover. "Brightside's hit!"

He groans through gritted teeth as someone pushes against his side, his side erupting in an intense fire. First time wounded, he knew it would be bad, just didn't think it would be like this. He opens his eyes and finds the eyes of Sgt Coleman, his friend, the commanding officer he's been with for a month into this hell, staring back at him, a gaping hole in his neck.

He looks to his helmet that fell off when he hit the ground and finds a picture of his son stuck in between the straps.

" _RPG!_ " Roland yells as he dives over him.

* * *

" _No!_ "

"Arnold!"

He feels himself fall then quickly scramble across the floor, his body still pumping with adrenaline. He feels his back hit against a wall and his eyes quickly skirt around the dark room, his hand pressing against the long gash in his side, not realizing he doesn't feel blood. His mind shakes with everything gripping him, keeping him from settling. The gun fire, the blood he felt on his face, the heat and the dust in the air, the intense ringing in his ears from the explosions knocking him around as if he was nothing, the dull thud of the gun fire afterward. Just... everything.

"Arnold, it's okay." A soft, angelic voice says. "It's okay, it's just a dream." It says again as he feels a pair of small, almost dainty hands on his heaving chest.

He feels his eyes open and the immediately find the dark figure kneeling in front of him, their hands on his chest.

"What's your name?" It asks in a soft, slow voice.

"Pvt Shortman first class, 75th Ranger Regiment, 2nd battalion, Charlie company."

He hears a sigh and feels the figure... her... move next to him, scooting closer to him. Her hands move from his chest to his jaw. He knows those hands. "Arnold... it's me, it's Helga. Do you know where you are?"

His eyes focus, blips of reality beginning to filter through the memories of that hot day. He lets out a long breath and relaxes himself against the wall. "I'm clearly not in Iraq." He says, his mind realizing who it is and where he is now as he presses a hand against his forehead leaned back against the wall.

She chuckles lightly as her hands move off his jaw. "No, you're not."

A silence falls over them and he doesn't want himself to feel embarrassed. He's sure that she's awoken from nightmares before. But he's supposed to be stronger than this. Stronger for her. Her seeing him this vulnerable, he doesn't know what to do now. If there's anything he can say or do to bring back that man that she sought comfort in the day before, the arms she felt safe in. "So," She begins again, "bad dream?"

He takes another breath, still trying to force the adrenaline to fade. "No, just... just memories."

There's another pause as she situates herself next to him, moving to sit next to him, leaning against the wall next to the sliding glass door out to his small patio. "You want to tell me about it?"

He wants to just throw her off, tell her it was nothing. It was nothing. "We had gotten word from one of our translators that there a few insurgents in this town we were sweeping, so we had to do another sweep before we headed back to our FOB. A sergeant had just come up and told me when he was shot by a sniper. I was thrown to the ground by an IED, and had to rush to cover through a cloud of hot dust with bullets flying at me. When I got to cover, Coleman, my sergeant, was just laying there. Eddy laid down cover fire while I picked him up and carried him to the alley where the rest of my unit was. I was almost in cover when I was shot in the side."

"You were shot?" She asks, her voice small, a little shaky even.

"It was just a flesh wound." He dismisses. Still hurt like hell. "I didn't notice I still had his blood on my face until we got back to base."

There's another silence between them as he finishes retelling his memory. His looking ahead of him, toward the door to his apartment, his eyes now acclimatized to the darkness. "I had no idea you've seen so much." She says, probably trying to pick her words carefully.

He chuckles under his breath, bitterly, and shakes his head. "It's probably better that way." He says lowly as he pushes himself up off the ground. He just sees her nod on the corner of his eye. "I'm sorry if I woke you."

"I was already awake actually. I just came out to check and see if you were awake when I heard you muttering, then saw you start shaking."

He stretches his strained muscles as he gets to his feet and looks to the clock on his cable box. just past four AM. He moves across the carpet of his apartment, just into the arch way into the hall way that leads to the bathroom and bedroom when he hears her get up off the floor and call for him. "Arnold?" He stops after turning on the over head light in the living room and turns toward her. "Listen, about Roy." She starts, walking forward.

"You don't need to worry about him anymore, Helga." He says with a soft smile, reassuring her that she's safe with him. She returns it, crossing her arms over her stomach tightly again. She took off her sweater and is now just in one of her tank tops. She looks pretty sexy right now. But it's not the right time. He looks away before moving down the hall way again.

He enters his bathroom, splashing some cold water on his face before bracing himself against the sink and looking at himself in the mirror. He has some pretty dark shadow, his eyes look tired. He sighs as his dream still skirts along the edges of his mind until he feels the pain from that day in his side. He looks to his side, pulling his long sleeved t-shirt up and running his finger along the eight inch gashed scar going across his side. He sighs heavily again and lets his shirt fall back down, hiding his scar. One of many.

He goes back out and finds her still standing in the same place, looking a bit awkward. Nervously shifting about, looking around his apartment. "Make yourself at home, Gorgeous." He tells her, putting a hand on her shoulder as he passes her.

He goes over to the couch and sits down, pulling his laptop open then waiting for it to power up. It's another moment before he feels the sofa dip from her coming to sit next to him, their legs just an inch apart from being smashed together. His eyes find her arm, nestled in her lap, and he reaches over and gently runs his thumb over it. "Does it still hurt?" He asks.

She shakes her head a bit, not moving to shake his hand off. "No. More emotionally than anything else."

"That's what I meant, Helga." He clarifies and meets her eyes. Her eyes look away, saddened, guarded by not wanting her shell to break in front of him. He's seen that before. "If you don't want to tell me what happened, I won't ask."

She lets out a breath, looking down at his hand still covering her forearm. "I had told him what happened between..." She closes her mouth after choking on her words, resolve coming to her again after a second or two. "Between us, at the bar. And what you said. He told me that he didn't want me seeing you again. I told him I couldn't do that, that you were important to me, no matter what you're going through." He probably shouldn't, but he feels his heart warm at what she's telling him. "We got into a fight and went back and forth for a few minutes. I told him I was going back to my dorm and to call me when he's ready to apologize."

She pauses again, her resolve harder than ever. He just keeps his thumb stroking gently across the warm skin of her arm.

"That's when he grabbed me and pulled me toward him. He told me that if I didn't stay away from you, he'd make me."

He sighs a long breath, trying to cast out his anger with it. After hearing this, maybe he should have left that bullet in the chamber after all. He closes his eyes and turns away. That would only cause more problems. Nancy is taking a look at the files when she gets into the the FBI field office here in the city, and it won't take them long to put it all together.

He opens his eyes again and forces a smile, for her. "I'm just glad you're safe, Helga."

She smiles, forcing it as much as he did. "Me too." She says in a small voice, crossing her arms again.

He moves back, leaning back into the couch with her, looking over to her. "That's your thinking face."

Helga looks over to him with a raised brow. "My what?"

"Your thinking face. You have something on your mind and you don't know if you should tell me or not." She chuckles lightly, fighting desperately a smile that's threatening to take over her face. "I don't know if you remember but... we used to date back in the day, Helga. I remember a thing or two."

She looks down to her lap, uncrossing her arms and starts to pick at her thumbnail. "It's just... the other night at the bar, you said..." She trails off.

"I was pretty out of it, Helga. Can you elaborate a bit?"

She lets out a short breath, hardening her shoulders, "You said that you used to love me."

His chest tightens with the breath being sucked out of him. After a few seconds, being able to gather his thoughts, he can only think of one thing. Used to? "Helga, I was..."

She looks back up to him for a split second, a heavy smile appearing on her face. "You were drunk, I get it." He lets out the breath caught in his throat and feels himself deflate. She's been through enough, telling her that he's still in love with her will only complicate things. "Arnold, before I left, I... left you a note." He feels his chest tighten again, knowing exactly what she's talking about and recalling her note word for word. "Do you remember?"

He cranes his head forward a bit and stands up without a word. He goes into his bedroom and goes to the top drawer of his dresser and picks up the note, gently nestled on top. It's old, wrinkled from being crammed in a duffel bag and brought through two tours in Iraq and from Op Huntsman. He goes back out, opening the letter when he's back into the living room. "You mean this one?" He says, looking back up to her, finding her looking at him with a bit of a wide eyed look.

She leans forward and reaches for it. "You kept this?" She asks, astonished as she starts to read it.

"I didn't have much when I was in the military. Reading that note was the only thing I had that reminded me of some kind of home." He watches her for a few minutes, standing a few feet away as she reads it. "I've always wondered if you managed to succeed." She looks back up to him with a raised brow. "Finding yourself."

She leans back again, letting the note fall back into her lap. "I think I did, yeah." She says with a smile.

"Good." He responds softly, going back to sit down next to her. There are words left out in the open, hanging. She read the last line of that note, as has he, multiple times. She will always love him. Then.

"Arnold-"

She's stopped with a heavy pounding on his door.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Kind of a short chapter, I know. Hope you like it though. You could review and let me know.**

* * *

His head snaps toward his door, heart thumps before going into his throat. Then his mind goes elsewhere. "Helga, go in my bedroom." He commands her in a slightly hushed voice.

"Wha-Arnold." She starts in a panicked voice.

"Go in my bedroom and close the door." He orders her again, looking over to her. She looks scared, silently asking him to keep her safe. She closes her mouth and steps around the coffee table and starts down the hallway. "And Helga." He softly calls. She looks over her shoulder, fear still clenching her features. Another four pounds come on the door. Not knocking, pounding with the blunt of a fist. Cops would have announced themselves right after the first knock. Helga jumps, but Arnold doesn't flinch. "Don't come out until I tell you." He tells her.

He doesn't want to talk to her like this, but he can't think of it now. His mind is in another place, another version of himself taking over. She quickly goes down the hall and turns into his bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.

He takes a slow breath and reaches into the long drawer of the coffee table in front of him. He pulls out Grandpa's 1911 out from a pile of papers, tugging the slide back to check it's loaded, then pulling the hammer back with his thumb. He steps up to the door, just a few feet away, lifts the gun, putting his left hand over his right, lining up the sites, focusing his left eye on the front site, aiming directly at the peep hole.

There's another loud pounding on his door, six or seven this time. But he remains unshaken. It's four o'clock in the morning and this is an unsecured building. He hears a groan on the other side of the door, then the knob being tested. He quietly stalks up to the door and looks through the peep hole.

Sure enough, he should have known. His dress shirt dismayed, face still beaten, hair disheveled. He watches for a few moments as Roy looks up through the peep hole, his arms braced against the door jams outside. Taking one last breath, gun still being pointed forward, he pulls the chain out, unlocked the deadbolt, then the door lock, and flings open the door, then jumping back to put a sizable gap between them.

With his gun lifted, left eye focused on the site being pointed directly at Robert's head, he doesn't give him a chance to speak. "You take one more step, I won't hesitate to put a bullet in your head." He warns him lowly.

Roy stops dead in his tracks, just in the thresh hold of Arnold's apartment. "Where is she?"

He doesn't answer, just keeps his sites trained on Roy's head. He doesn't want to shoot him, go through the trouble of having to get his gun, his favorite gun at that, back from evidence. He's well within his rights, and this guy is sure to be wanted by now anyway.

"I know she's here. Now where is she?"

He thinks about staying silent, letting him stare down the barrel of his gun, but decides to speak. "I was an Army Ranger." He starts, putting even more warning into his voice. "They taught me a lot of ways to kill someone. If you leave now, you won't find out how many."

Roy narrows his eyes to him, glaring at him.

"And just so you know, you're trespassing and I'm well within my rights to pull this trigger. If you turn around now, the only thing you'll have to worry about being wounded is your ego."

Roy looks around his apartment, one last ditch effort to find her before slowly turning around. He's out the door, the sites still being trained on him as he looks back to shoot Arnold one last hard stare. He's down the hallway and is gone.

Arnold lowers his gun, letting himself relax. He closes his door, locking everything back up, then goes over to his bedroom door, still shut tightly. He taps the bend of his finger lightly against the wood. "Helga?" He calls.

He hears the bed frame creak and then the knob being turned. The door slowly opens and she looks to him, glossy eyed.

"It's okay, he's gone." He says softly. Her eyes go to his right hand, still holding his Grandpa's old service weapon. He follows her eyes, then takes a step back. "Sorry." He says on a chuckle, almost jokingly as he holds the hammer back, pulls the trigger and decocks it, then flicking the safety on. He goes back to the coffee table and sets it back inside, sliding it shut.

Helga comes back out, creeping her way back out into his living room, arms crossed over her stomach, hands rubbing her arms as if she's cold. Fear still grips her features. He stays standing in front of the coffee table, watching her. "Are you okay, Helga?"

She looks back up to him, stopping just a few feet away from the coffee table, separating them. She opens her mouth to speak, but chokes on her words and looks away again, shuffling away from him.

He slowly steps around the coffee table, stopping in his tracks when she takes a noticeable step back. "Helga, what is it?"

She lets out an audible breath before looking back up to him. "Would you have really killed him?"

He lets out a sigh, cementing himself to his spot. "Only if he had forced me to." She looks away again, shaking her head off to the side, revealing the track of a tear scratching her beautiful face. Hates his honesty is hurting her this much. There's a look in her eyes now that she doesn't even know the man standing in front of her.

"You really would have murdered him?" She asks him, anguished anger in her voice. Pain is now evident on her face.

"Murder? Helga, he threatened you and was here to force you to come back with him. So yes, if he had forced me to, I wouldn't have hesitated."

"Arnold, he may not have been the best guy in the world, but he's still a person." She says, letting her arms fall, palms down and facing out, pleading with him almost.

"You're talking like I don't already know what it's like to take a life. And until you do, until you know what it's like to have _no_ choice but to end someone's life, _you_ don't get to talk!" He hisses through clenched teeth. He feels every part of him stop when he realizing what he's feeling. The flex in his neck, the click in his jaw, his nails digging into his palm, the blood rushing in his ears. The image in front of him finally reaches his mind, making his whole being sink.

He has to look away.

The hurt in her eyes, so pointed, so direct. Directed at him. Letting him know that he caused it. He stumbles back, shaking his head from side to side, now realizing his eyes are burning. How long have they been doing that? He raises his hands and pushes the sides of his head in, letting out the most hushed groan he can. His back hits against the wall next to his couch, and he feels himself slide down to the floor. He tries to fight it, the rising choke he feels in his lungs, force it back down. But it's not working.

He promised himself that he would never hurt her. But he did.

He brings his knees up and hides behind them. He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling this moisture that should not be there leak out. The clench is still there, in his chest, just sitting there, right in the middle. His hands fist his hair, tightening until it feels as if he is about to rip his hair out. He feels a tight mixture of humiliation, anger, a strange sense of betrayal, and a need to hit something really hard. To punch a hole is something. Maybe that will make him feel better.

But in the next second, the only thing he feels is her soft touch, running up his forearms. She gently pries his fingers open and takes his hands in hers. He still can't look at her. Can't face the situation. Her small, almost dainty fingers work themselves against the tendons in his hands. "Arnold." She calls out to him in that soft voice of her's. The voice she used that night in that other life time. After too long of a pause, he lifts his head and looks up to her.

She's kneeling down in front of him, her face almost stone serious as she looks down at their hands. She lets out a sigh and stands up, taking his hands with her, never letting go. She tugs on his hands and he pushes himself up off the floor. Once on his feet, she softly wraps her arms around his chest. "Helga." He protests.

"Just hug me, Arnold." He can't answer her, feeling her hand run itself in a small motion up and down his back. It only takes a second to fall into her, under her spell, trapped in the vortex of her. He wraps his arms around her, pressing his nose into her hair, letting her flood his senses. "We've both seen things." She says, words slurred a bit from her cheek resting against his shoulder. "We've both changed, whether for better or worse, I think only time will tell. But for now I think we just have to accept that. That we aren't the same two teenagers who left each other lying in bed."

"Helga..." He starts, putting his hands on her shoulders and pushes her back, more than reluctantly. But when he looks at her, at those big blue eyes, sucking all the courage right out of him. "I..." He can't ask her. Not now. He lets out a long breath, closing his eyes and shaking his head in an almost invisible motion. "You're probably tired. I should let you rest."

Her brow pushes together in a straight line. He resigns to his fate, of her basically saying there's no going back, pushes her off of him and sits down on his couch. He slouches forward, running a hand through his matted and messy hair, either forcing himself not to look at her or unable to, he can't really figure out which one.

He hears her pad across the carpet of his apartment, down the short hallway and into his bedroom, sliding the door closed, but not shut. He throws himself back and looks aimlessly into his lap. His eyes eventually go to his left forearm. He has two tattoos, one of his Ranger company, right arm, and one running the length of the underside of his left forearm, reading 'NO EMOTION'. He lifts up his long sleeved shirt and traces the length of it, outlining the letters. He lets out a deep sigh, burying himself, that side of him under a shell.

She doesn't want to go back. She doesn't want him back, doesn't want them. The thought of coming back home and finding her, or maybe the thought that she was just out there at all, is what kept him going, in the military. He never even considered being rejected by her. When they started dating back in high school, she was very open about the crush she had on him. He teased her once in a while about it, but hindsight being twenty twenty, she loved him. They made a great couple.

But that was with just regular Arnold Shortman. Not Pvt Shortman, Army Ranger.

He lets out a sigh and closes his eyes, letting his head fall back.

He needs to move on. For both of their sakes.


	9. Chapter 9

It was the next morning, around eight o'clock, he couldn't be sure. A clean long sleeved shirt, gym shorts, his feet hitting in a steady pace against the side walk. He lost track of how long he's been running. His chest is burning a bit, lungs feeling over expanded. He reaches the park and slows, breathing a bit hard and reaching up to wipe the sweat from his mouth.

He left Helga in his apartment. She was just getting into the shower when he left to go running. He asked if she wanted him to stay, but she just gave a nervous smile, a wave of her hand and told him not to worry about her. He starts stretching his muscles out, pulling his foot back, feeling his mind start to slip. He lifts his other leg up, staring off into space, wide eyed.

Roy's probably been arrested by now, and she's safe. That's all that matters. She's safe. He'd be lying if he told himself that things turned out how he wanted. Coming to her rescue, saving her from an abusive boyfriend being the thing that makes her fall in love with him all over again and they can be happy together.

But that's not what happened. Things are probably worse between them now. She's being distant, she's scared of him, pulling back, looking him in the eyes as if he's a complete stranger. He might as well be. Most times he's surprised at the face he sees in the mirror. He's tried to get used to it, but the more he tries, the harder he fails.

She's been through hell. So, how can she overcome so easily? Is she just stronger than he is? He scoffs and shakes his head, half in envy and in pride, because of course she is. She's the strongest person he's ever had the privilege of knowing. He takes a few more deep breaths, breaking himself out of his own mind, and starts running back toward his apartment.

Yes, he would have killed him if he had taken another step, wouldn't have even given it a second thought, probably not even a regret either. That's what soldiers do, after all. They don't question orders. It wouldn't have been murder, it never has been. He's a soldier. Was. Escalation of force, one of the first things they taught him. Never lift your gun unless you're going to shoot. Something he wants to yell at the cops for. After being in the military, he has a firm belief that any cop should have a background in military service for that particular reason.

But still, the first time he killed someone, he tossed his lunch when it was over. He doesn't know anyone who was the same after their first time pulling the trigger on someone. Anyone who was shouldn't be in the military, maybe even the general population. Of course he's ran it through his head, thousands of times. If he hadn't killed that one guy that was running toward him, he'd be dead. He knows that. But still, seeing that man's blood shoot up into the air as he put a bullet through his skull haunts him. He was called a man, but seeing his face, covered in dust and blood, he wasn't any older than seventeen.

But after the third time, it numbed. He just didn't think about it anymore. They were orders, and he carried them out. But he's a civilian now. They aren't orders anymore. People will always tell him that he was fighting for something, his country, freedom, democracy, whatever. They will tell him that what he did was selfless, brave, heroic. They will thank him for his service, shake his hand, maybe even salute him. But they don't know what it's like. None of them do.

It's still numb, though.

He thought he saw the worst of it after his second tour in Iraq when he was caught in that ambush, captured. Those two days were where he got most of the scar tissue. Then he was brought into Operation Huntsman. The things he saw there, none of them, not even the Brass was prepared for. Human trafficking, sax slave rings, child sex slave rings, torture chambers. Seeing what people are truly capable of, what depths their depravity and wickedness can reach. Some might say he lost his faith in humanity. But those people had no humanity to begin with. They weren't human. Never were.

That last mission, those damn Ethiopian rebels, throwing such a beautiful person, perfect in every way, a person that did nothing but help people, in a windowless, dank utility closet in the middle of the Congo. He's glad they didn't surrender.

He slows to a stop outside his apartment building and heads up to his floor. He walks in, quick to catch his breath, and finds her on the couch with the TV on. She's leaning forward, focused intently on the screen. He looks toward the TV and starts listening.

" _We have no new details, but as it remains, it seems that local law enforcement, including the FBI, was tipped off about Sunset Banks president, Roy Connell's money laundering business anonymously. Connell is now in police custody, charged with multiple counts of fraud, and possibly conspiracy to commit murder. We will bring you more on this story as it develops. In other news, the local..."_

He closes the door and she looks over. "Arnold, Roy, he-"

"I know." He says lowly. Her brow pushes together and her head shakes a bit. "Helga..." He starts and moves toward her. He sits down next to her, taking a deep breath before reaching for her hands. He's honestly surprised when she gives them to him. "I'm sorry."

She looks up from their enjoined hands to him. "What do you mean?"

He's sorry for going behind her back and having her boyfriend investigated, purely out of envy. "You deserve better than him." She nods and looks away.

He wants to tell her. Everything. That he went to Rhonda and had her investigate Roy, that he warned Roy to stay away from her, that it was his connection to Eddy, and Eddy's connection to his ex-wife at the FBI field office that got Roy arrested. That it was him and his team from Operation Huntsman that saved her. But he can't tell her any of it. Especially about Op Huntsman. That's why he was chosen. No family, no real personal connections left, impressive service record. He always heard about the black budget military projects, virtually unlimited funds, classified top-secret, plausible deniability. Never thought he'd be a part of any of it though.

Helga sighs and leans back into the couch. "What do I do now?" She asks in a low, monotone voice.

He chuckles under his breath and shakes his head. "Not the person to ask, Beautiful."

She offers a chuckle in response and the first real smile he's seen from her in what feels like a long time. It's soft, but it lifts her face and lights up her big, blue, fresh water eyes. "Are you hungry? I could make you something." He says and stands up, heading toward his kitchenette.

"Actually, I think I better head back to my dorm." She says and stands up. He stops and turns back to face her questioning her silently with his brow. "I still have some assignments to catch up on. And I... just could use some time to work through things on my own."

He smiles, disheartened. "Yeah, I understand. Do you want me to drive you back, it's like a ten mile walk."

They both agree and head downstairs out onto the street where he parked his car. He doesn't bother to change out of his grimy work out clothes, knowing he probably reeks of dried sweat, whereas she smells freshly showered, and her usual scent of apples. He loves it when she smells like that. It reminds him of when he'd hug her from behind in high school and smell her hair. It always smelled like apples.

He pulls into the parking lot of her dorm and gets out with her, escorting her to the outside door of her dorm room. "Listen, Arnold..." She starts, stopping and facing him. "I don't think I ever really thanked you for what you did. Coming to get me and everything. And then when Robert came by this morning, it..." She trails off. "I just wanted to thank you for being there for me." She crosses her arms.

"Well, you're important to me, Helga." He says nonchalantly with a shrug. She smiles that same soft smile as before, and their eyes lock. And before he realizes he can't stop them... "Let me take you out."

"Arnold..." She dismisses with a look toward the ground and a small shake of her head.

"It doesn't have to mean anything. It can just be two friends going out for dinner. And in all honestly, I could use a night out with someone that's uninterrupted by..." Abusive boyfriends. "anyone." She meets his eyes again, looking at him, gauging what he really means. "I know a little Italian place. I can pull a few strings and get the place all to ourselves."

That earns him a raised eye brow, pleasantly. "You can pull strings now?"

"I can when I pulls the owners nephew's ass out of more fire fights than we can both count." She laughs, a bright smile sneaking out onto her face for just an instant before another pause envelops them. "So what do you say?"

"I do like Italian." She says with a satisfied nod. "Can you give me until next Friday? I just need some time, is all."

He smiles, content with waiting another week. "Friday it is."

* * *

She curls her legs tighter into her chest, looking away. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore."

"Are you still having trouble sleeping?"

She nods, ashamed. She should be over this by now.

"And the dreams? Are you still having them?"

"Yeah. I keep making excuses to my room mate about it. It's gotten to the point where I stay up on purpose so I don't have nightmares. I've tried listening to music, leaving a TV on, nothing works. I still have them. But..."

"But?" He prods.

She sighs and cradles her arms into the cove between her chest and her knees. "I spent the night at Arnold's last night. It was the first real nights sleep I've gotten since."

"Why do you think that is?"

She shrugs limply. "I always felt safer with him around, ever since we were kids. He just had this way about him. He made you feel calm, like there was nothing wrong. He had this way of looking at you, like the rest of the universe just fell away and it was just us."

"You're speaking in the past tense, Helga." He says, making notes in his clipboard. "He isn't like that anymore?"

She doesn't want to answer. She stays silent, unwilling to dignify his tough question with a response.

"Do you think you can be with this new version of him you've described?"

"Right now it feels like we're just too different."

"And you didn't feel that way in high school?"

"At first. But then, there were times when it was just us that we just clicked, in every way. We just hit it off so well."

"And now?"

"I want that back."

"Are you talking about you or him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you talking about wanting his old self back, or _your_ old self back?" She doesn't answer. He sighs and sets his papers down. "Helga, you've made great progress over these past few months. When we first started meeting, you could barely function. That's some amazing progress in such a short period of time considering what you went through, Helga. But you've never openly admitted what's haunting you the most. You've never said it out loud, which tells me that you don't want to believe it really happened. I think that's why it's manifesting itself in your dreams. And you know as well as I do that you can't move on until you do."

She cracks with a sob, wraps her arms around her legs and squeezes, hiding herself. She breaths in a shaky breath and forces the words out as the horrible memory flashes in her mind. "They raped me the first day."

Her voice feels so small, weak. _She_ feels small and weak.

"They all did. It didn't stop until they put me in that room. Didn't want to damage their merchandise, I guess." She says bitterly. "After I was saved, I couldn't let anyone touch me. That's why Roy grabbed me. He wouldn't take another one of my excuses."

"Why didn't you tell Arnold?"

"I'm afraid that he'll see me as broken. I can see that look in his eyes when he looks at me, and if I tell him what really happened to me, I don't know if it will be there."

"Helga, you went through probably the most traumatic experience anyone can go through." He says and leans forward. "And your progress thus far is a testament to just your strong you truly are. But trying to shut this out and pretend it didn't happen is not healthy. You are only broken if you believe that you're beyond repair, and you're not, Helga. It's a long, grueling process, I know. And you may have a relapse, you may not."

"I can't keep putting on a smile for everyone and pretend like everything's fine."

"Then don't. You said that writing sometimes helps?" She nods. "Then write, about anything."

"What should I do about Arnold?"

"Well," He starts with a sigh and leans back, "I think you should tell him."

"What if he doesn't understand?" She asks, looking out the shaded window.

"If what you told me is true, I think he will."

* * *

 **A/N: I know in the last version I wrote it strictly from Arnold's perspective, but I decided to pull this one in a new direction. And this last scene was kind of vital. Needed to make future chapters more believable, I guess. Can always argue with me in a review.**

 **A/N2: Thanks again to the reviewer who pointed out that I switched around the names of Robert and Roy. I didn't bother to completely reread what I wrote so far since I knew where I was going with it already. I got mixed up because I think I named Helga's boyfriend Robert in the last version. Sorry for anyone who rereads this, or to anyone who points out any that I didn't catch and didn't fix.**


	10. Chapter 10

He eases to a stop outside her dorm, turning off the ignition, then steps out. He snaps down his lapels and rolls his neck. He takes a deep breath past the nervous lump in his throat and starts toward the door. He notices a pair of girls walking out and grinning at him. He sees them, but doesn't make a notion that he appreciates, or even notices their attention. He whips open the front door and makes his way up.

It's been a hectic week. That Monday, he came onto campus, walking toward his first class of the day, when he spotted a pair of cops talking to her. He quickly jogged up to them and stopped just a few feet away from them when she met his eyes. There was a hint of fright, but most of all, he got the sense of her just wanting it all to be over with. He could hear them reassure her that Roy was behind bars awaiting trial. And with the banks assets frozen, pending further IRS investigation, he couldn't make bale.

He wanted to ask her if she was okay, but before he got the chance, she simply smiled dismissively and went on her way to class. He forced himself to stop her after class and talk to her. She told him she was just glad it was all over with and that she can move on. Things went about normally from there. Yesterday, she found him in the cafeteria and asked him if they were still on for tonight. He honestly wasn't sure before she asked, with everything going on, if she even remembered.

But he's here. He made the call to Eddy's Uncle Nemo. Arnold's met him. New York Italian, came out west to Washington after his wife died of cancer. Arnold stayed with him during his leave right before he was shipped out on his second tour.

He takes one last deep breath and lifts his hand to knock on her dorm room door. He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his black slacks and waits. The door opens to her room mate. Never met her before. "Hi, I was looking for Helga." He states like it's a question.

"She just came out of the bathroom, I'll let her know you're here." She says and turns around.

Once her room mate is across the dorm to Helga's room, he lets out a shaky breath, rocking himself back on the balls of his feet. He never did like wearing an ankle piece. He puts that brief thought out of his mind when he hears the two of them conversing inside. He looks to the ground, waiting and collecting his thoughts.

When he hears a set of heels softly click out into the small main area of the dorm, he looks up, feeling his whole world fall away.

She's perfect.

Her dress is a soft pink, going down just past her knees, hugging her hips, showing just the right amount of cleavage, with a small sweater thing over her arms. He dated a girl who did nothing but talk about clothes in high school, he should know what the hell those things are called. But she's beautiful. "You ready to go?" She breaks him out of his trance.

He shakes his head and flashes her a smile, mumbling the first unintelligible words that spill out of his fumbling mouth. And after a few seconds of that, he steps aside and lifts his arm to usher her out of the door ahead of him, feeling like a complete dip.

"You look nice, Arnold." She compliments him as she passes. Her green apple scene is so powerful tonight. He can practically feel himself falling into her.

She starts down the hall way when he feels his conscience punch him in the face. Say something, dick. "I feel like Quasi Moto standing next to you." He grimaces as it leaves his mouth. Sounded better in his head. She looks over her shoulder with a raised brow. "It sounded better before I actually said it." He tells her as he steps up next to her. He feels the clench in his gut untwist when he sees her smile.

He leads her down to his car and moves to the passenger side door to open it for her. But stops when his hand is on the handle, then turns to her. He pauses, looking her in the eye. "You look really beautiful, Helga." Simple, keep it simple.

Her lips shrink as she tries to hide her smile by tilting her head forward and replacing a strand of hair over her ear, along with the rest of it, falling in a long wave down her shoulders. He opens the her door and she slides in.

They start through the city, heading toward the water front. "So, you know the owner of this place?" She asks after a few minutes of silence.

"He's Eddy's uncle. I stayed with him when I was on leave before my second tour. I couldn't get the place to ourselves," He says, looking over to her briefly, "but I managed to get us a table by the window. It's usually pretty hard to get a window table on a Friday."

He sees her smile again and look down to her lap. He chances a few glances as he drives. She's just looking down to her small purse, fidgeting with the strap. She used to do that when she was thinking about something serious. She would always pick at the fraying of the stitches on her old bag she had in high school when he had to pry whatever family problems she was having with Mariam out of her when she was hiding out up in his old attic room.

He doesn't want to pry whatever it is she's thinking out of her now. To him, tonight is about relieving stress. Show her a good time. She deserves it.

After another ten minutes of silence, he parks on the street just across from Nemo's. He quickly gets out and jogs over to her side of the car in time to close the door behind her and escort her across the street. She pulls her sweater thing tighter around her against the brisk breeze coming through the streets and goes ahead of him as he holds the door open for her, just as he always did for his girlfriends back in high school. Rhonda may have been more spoiled than milk on a hot day, but he still did it for her.

He goes up to the host's podium, leaving Helga just a few feet away by the door, with people waiting along the wall for a table. It's pretty crowded, and he has a slight fear than it doesn't ruin their... outing. "Hi, I'm looking for Nemo."

"What is this con-"

"Arnaldo!" A voice booms.

He smiles and looks up to the large, portly man lumbering out of the kitchen.

"Come te la passi?" Nemo says, lumbering through the tables to meet Arnold, who started toward him with open arms. They hug each other, patting each other heavily on the back, laughing.

"Mai migliore. E tu?" Arnold rattles off.

"E'una bella notte con la societa alimentare." Nemo says and slaps Arnold's shoulder.

He laughs, "Grazie, Nemo, Grazie."

Nemo laughs and leans back with his hands folded on his hips. "So, where's my nephew, ah?" A thick Italian New York accent asks.

"Eddy won't let me keep tabs on him anymore, Nemo."

"Ah." Nemo waves a hand. "Haven't seen the kid in weeks. Favorite uncle, can't even get a visit from him." He says, shrugging his shoulders.

Arnold laughs, then turns around, extending his hand to Helga. "Nemo, this is Helga." He says as she steps up next to him. "I told her that this was the best Italian in Hillwood."

"Best Italian outside of Italy." He boasts. "Lovely to meet you, Helga." Nemo gently shaking her hand with both of his and offering her a bright smile. "I got a table for you two right over here." He says, lifting his hand up. "Scotty! Table three."

"Right this way." The waiter says, grabbing two menus.

"Ey, tell my nephew to call his favorite Uncle, will ya?" Nemo says to him as he slowly lumbers back toward the back.

"Can't make any promises, Nemo." Arnold calls through the restaurant.

Arnold and Helga follow the waiter past a few tables before coming to a small table next to the window, with a single red candle in the center. The waiter sets down the menus as Arnold pulls out Helga's chair, then pushing it back in when she's seated. He thanks the host quietly when he moves to the other side of the table, noticing her raised brow and surprised, agape smile. "What?" He asks with a chuckle.

"You speak Italian?"

He lets out another small chuckle as he scoots his chair closer to the table. "I had some time on my hands when I wasn't on duty."

She holds her mouth open for a few seconds before shaking her head and leaning back. "Didn't you flunk Spanish in high school?"

"A D's passing." He defended with a shrug. She chuckles as the waiter comes by and takes their drink order. He turns down the offer of a choice from their wine selection, opting for sparkling water. He would have picked something from their wine selection, Nemo has always boasted about it, but he's carrying tonight. They fall into a light conversation about classes, telling jokes, old stories and memories from their time at PS 120. He doesn't even notice her burdens have melted off her shoulders. He's too wrapped up in how well the night is going.

He hasn't felt this way in years. The lift in his chest, the twinge in his lips that make him unable to stop smiling, the feeling that he could lean across the table right now and kiss her, and she'd do nothing but respond in kind. Right now, there's no Roy, no old pulling scars, no nightmares, no PTSD, it's just them. Some time passes before their food comes and when it does and their plates are sitting in front of them, Arnold leans back with a raised brow and a smile, waiting for her to take the first taste of her stuffed beef.

When she takes the first small bite, her eyes widen. "O m- gaw!" She says, finally breaking the graceful streak she's been on all night so far. He laughs as she swallows and points down to her plate with her fork. "This is the best meal I've had in years."

"So, no regrets coming out with me tonight?" He asks her, stabbing a few pieces of pasta.

"Are you kidding?" She says, beginning her attack on her own meal.

They continue their telling of stories over dinner until their plates have cleared. They don't even seem to notice that they've both finished and their plates have been taken. "So, you got to use like... night vision goggles and stuff?"

"They gave them to us, but I never used them. They totally screw up your depth perception."

"What was being a Ranger like? Whenever I hear about them, I always think of like... Rambo."

He laughs at that. "I spent most of Ranger school either face down in mud or in the woods. I mean, they shoved me out of a plane, put a seventy pound backpack on me and made me march twelve miles in the dark, but... nothing prepared me for the real thing." He said, the tone between them sinking in a flash.

There's a pause, he's staring down into his empty glass, the image of that first seventeen year old kid lying face down in the dirt flashing in his mind. "How'd you get through it?" She asks quietly.

He looks up to her, her arched brow, cautious eyes, he just smiles and reaches into his inside coat pocket, pulling out that well worn picture. He holds it in front of him, looking down at that soft smile, those bright blue eyes, that long golden hair flowing down her shoulders, feeling now exactly what he felt in the middle of Iraq, or where ever else he was sent on Op Huntsman. Love. "With this."

He reaches over and hands her the picture, and watches as her expression blanks. She looks up to him after a few seconds of pause, arching her brow again. "You-"

"I carried that picture with me during two tours of Iraq. I'd look at it and think how pissed off you'd be if I didn't come back. How much you'd yell at me for not coming back to you."

She lets out a shaky breath, looking away. "Arnold... you're saying... that-"

"You're the only thing that got me through it all, Helga." He says, as much conviction behind his voice as he can put there.

He can hear her shudder out another breath, still not meeting his eyes, instead looking off to the side. He hates himself now for admitting this now that he can see her eyes start to glisten against the flame flickering from the candle. He feels his guilt sink into his system and leans back in his chair. This wasn't how it was suppose to go. How the hell _was_ it supposed to go? Fulfilling some wild fantasy that one night out together would bring it all back and they'd end up back in bed?

He lets out a long, silent breath and takes the photo back from where she let it fall on the table and puts it back in his coat pocket. "Arnold." She calls as he's running a hand through his hair. He looks up, seeing her eyes still averted. "When I was... being held..." She struggles to say.

"Helga, what is it?" He asks after she doesn't continue. He has a feeling that she needs to get whatever this is out.

She lets out a short breath, seeming to steel herself. "When I was being held hostage in the Congo... all I could do was dream. I'd sit there and just... think." She reaches up and quickly swipes at her cheek. "I'd close my eyes and picture you, and us. I'd picture we'd have this... little house just outside the city, you'd be waiting at the door for me with that bright smile on your face." She says with a soiled laugh. "I'd lose myself in that fantasy."

"During my second tour in Iraq, I was captured." He stops her out of no where. She's silenced as the memories flood his consciousness. "We were running this mission through this little... tiny village. IED went off next to me, knocked me out. When I came to, I was chained to a chair in the middle of a small room. I was chained to that chair for two days. And for that two days, they tortured me. They cut me, shocked me, beat me. On the third day, I woke up to an explosion outside, and I knew what was happening, and knew that they would be coming to kill me any minute. I could hear them shouting outside the door. So, when the door opened, I broke free, took cover, and when he came in to kill me, I snapped his neck." He says, emotionless.

"How'd you break free?"

"Broke my own thumb." He says, moving his left thumb around in a circle. "Grabbed his gun and downed two guys before my company found me. They said I was barely alive when they found me. Next thing I'm aware of, I'm being shipped off to Walter Reed to recover and being given a medal of valor for 'bravery.'" He says with air quotes. "I don't remember much from when they were holding me. But I remember hearing you. I'd hear your voice, right in my ear. You'd say... you're gonna be fine, Football Head. You're gonna be just fine."

There's another long pause between them and Arnold leans forward on his elbows. After a long few minutes, he feels himself laugh. "I bought us out here tonight to get away from our problems."

She chuckles. "No, you did, Arnold." He looks back up to her, surprised to see her smiling softly. "I'm having a great time."

He smiles back at her, "Well, it's uh... getting pretty late. You're probably tired." He says, getting ready to stand up.

"No." She says firmly. "I mean... we don't have to stop now, Arnold." She stands up, clutching her purse in front of her. "Why don't we just go for a walk. We can just talk." She suggests with a shrug. He stands up, smirking over at her. "We haven't gotten a chance to really... talk... since I got back."

He feels whatever weight he feels weighing on him evaporate. "I think I'd like that."

"I'm glad." She says, following him out after he puts down a fifty on the table. And as they pass the hosts podium, heading for the door, she bumps his side. "Football Head."


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: Been a while for this story. This chapter is kind of short, but I wanted to warn you that the next chapter will be rated M for slight sexual content. So please adjust your search parameters accordingly when searching for this story, thank you! And as always, let me know what you think of this chapter as well.**

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"Other than being in Iraq, you mean?" He asks on a chuckle.

"Yeah, other than being in Iraq, what was the thing you hated the most?" She asks.

He thinks for a minute, feeling her tug on his arm, which she has hers wrapped around. "Camels."

"Camels?"

"Camels." He nods.

"Why camels?"

"They're nasty, they're mean, they spit, they bite, they smell. Everyone in my company hated them. Eddie even had one kick him once, he asked our CO if he could shoot it."

She laughs, which brings a smile to his face, as it has all night long. They agreed to take a walk and just talk, and now find themselves walking along the waterfront, the part of town where the leafless trees are being lit up by lights, the restaurants are full, and people are fluttering through the streets, taking in the night, just as they are. He put his sport coat over her shoulders just a few minutes after they left Nemo's, then she put her arm through the hole made by his arm with his hand in his pocket. He hasn't said anything on the matter yet, fear it might scare her away.

It's been a long time since he felt like this, this at peace, in a long five years.

When her laughter subsides, he glances over and sees the same look in her eyes he saw in the car on their way here. He decides to just look back down to the bricks passing under their feet and let it go for now. "What about you, what was the worst part of being in the Peace Corps?"

She chuckles bitterly, "Other than being captured by Ethiopian bandits?"

"Yeah, other than that."

"Well, there really wasn't a worst part. I mean, the children I was teaching were always so grateful, the people were all so happy, even with what little they had. The tribe I was with in Tanzania could only get one gallon of water a day, and they were all still happy. It made my problems back home seem so petty and meaningless. I loved what I was doing, and I never really thought about any of the bad things about it. I mean, sure I went through hell when I was being held hostage, but I made it out. Most people who go through something like that don't, right?"

"Do you uh... remember anything else from when you were rescued?"

"Not much, really. I remember that I had just gotten fed maybe... an hour or two before I started to hear gunfire. The room I was in didn't have any windows, so I could never tell what time of day it was. I remember seeing the lights go out, then right after that, the room shook with an explosion. I heard everybody outside start yelling, then I started to hear gunfire outside, then a few seconds after that, I started to hear it inside. I thought that that was it, that I was going to die."

She's telling this story so nonchalantly, but the images of that night are still running clear through his mind. Snowman taking out the sentries in the towers, Red calling over the radio that the power was cut, then Eddy taking point as he always did, while he took up the rear until they were on the second floor where prelim recon and thermal imaging from the recon drone showed where the hostage was most likely being held.

"I heard some more gunfire down the hall, then two voices start calling out orders in English. That's when I saw my door open, and the guy who usually fed me was pointing a gun at me. I thought I was going to die, so I closed my eyes. When I heard another gunshot, but didn't feel anything, I opened my eyes and saw he was on the ground holding his arm. Not even one second after that, I saw two bullets go into his back. I had no clue what was going on, but I knew I wasn't going to make it out of there alive."

She has a ghosted look in her eyes now.

"When he turned the corner and looked at me, I heard him yell that the hostage was secure. Then he swung his rifle around his back and knelt down next to me. He said that it was okay, and that he was there to help. He reached up and pulled down the gag I had in my mouth, and asked me if I was hurt. In my head, I remember thinking that I was okay, but all I could do was scream... at the top of my lungs. I hadn't spoken a word in months, I just felt like screaming. When I did, I just broke out crying."

The sound of her sobbing in that tiny room echos in his head.

"My hands were tied together, so he lifted them up and put them around his neck and carried me out. I asked him who he was, and he said he was with the military. I didn't think the military would save me, but they did." She says with a smile. "I didn't think the military could get involved in something like that, but I guess I was wrong. The one thing I remember about him was he had this tattoo down his forearm. It said uh... no emotion."

His breath catches, his chest tightening, and his forearm starts to shake. He closes his eyes and stops himself. He can't tell her. Op Huntsman is still classified, need to know. He hasn't even told Eddy that she might be the one hostage they actually managed to save. Hell, he didn't even tell Eddy what he found when they ran that mission out of the Yucatan. Didn't tell anyone.

"I never did get to thank them, whoever it was that saved me. I always thought that the government didn't negotiate with terrorists. I guess they made an exception."

He chuckles halfheartedly. "Yeah."

They keep walking along the waterfront, while he burrows his left arm deeper into his pocket. I counts himself lucky that he left his sleeves rolled down when he gave her his coat. "You ever think about going back?" He asks her.

She lets out a long breath and bows her head a bit. "It would be a lie if I said I haven't thought about it, especially with everything going on with Roy." He feels a stab in his chest at what she just said. "It may sound crazy, but things over there were..."

"Easier."

She looks over to him with a furrowed brow at first, but it softens after a moment. "Yeah... easier."

They fall into a thick silence again, and he can feel the words trying to push past the lump he's creating in his throat. He didn't want to get into anything serious tonight. He wanted to change the subject when she was reliving what happened to her, should have in hindsight. He decided when they were talking in the restaurant to just make her happy tonight, that it's not about him at all, that it's about her and showing her a good time. But... "Helga, if I'm complicating things for you, just tell me and I'll leave you alone." He says, not looking up from the bricks under their feet.

He feels his arm being pulled on, and looks back to realize that she's stopped in her tracks, looking over to him with her brow in a straight line. "Is that what you think I meant?"

"Helga, I'm just trying to make you happy." He tells her, pulling his hand out of his pocket and softly grasping her forearm. "And if that means me backing off, then-"

"Arnold." She says forcefully enough to stop him while pulling her arm away. "How long are we going to keep doing this? I thought we got past this in high school."

He shakes his head, genuinely confused as to what she means. "What do you mean, got past what?"

"This stupid dance." She says, motioning her hand between the two of them. "You've said in so many words that you want me back, and... and I..."

Trying not to be shaken that she just called him out on something so personal, he takes a small step toward her. "And you've made almost no mention of it. Hell, you even said that we were too different now to be together."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it!"

"I think that's exactly what you meant, Helga. I think you just don't want to admit that you want to be with the guy you left lying in bed five years ago, and not the one he turned into."

"I meant that no matter what we go through or who we turn into, we still belong together!" She says with glistening eyes and a challenging step forward. It's only a second after that she realizes what just spilled out of her mouth and her eyes grow wide with that realization and she turns away from him, putting a hand up to her face.

He stops himself from turning her around and kissing her. "You really think that we belong together?" He asks while settling for taking a small step toward her.

She turns her head back toward him, but still doesn't look at him. "A part of me does... yeah." He keeps slowly drifting towards her, just a foot away from reaching out and ghosting his hands across her shoulders. "But that part of me feels like it's the weakest. When we were in high school, it felt like the strongest. But now... I-I know I _want_ to be with you, but I don't know if-"

He stops her, putting his hand on her shoulder right as the word want left her lips and turning her, quickly leaning forward and finding her lips. They're just as soft and as warm as he remembers them being. She sucks in a quick breath in through her nose, her hands griping his shirt at the shoulders and seeming to push him back, her lips seem tense, and her breath is being let out erratically, and he stops kissing her the instant he reads all the signs and starts to pull away. But the hands that were pushing him away stop him and pull him back.

Their lips touch once again and he's met with her letting out a long breath, her whole body relaxing and melting under the hands he has gently planted on her waist. With a long motion of her lips, she leaves them open and sucks in a breath, he squeezes her waist in his hands captures her in another kiss. One of her arms go across his shoulders while the other goes into his hair, running her fingers up his scalp just as he remembers. She always knew how much that turned him on.

They share another long kiss, moving their lips against each other again, while he deepens in as much as he can by putting his hand on her cheek with his fingers lightly digging low into her scalp, his thumb grazing across her cheekbone. The kiss breaks, but they don't move to untangle themselves from each other. They just stay there, foreheads pressed together, breath hitting off each other, her hand still in his hair and his in hers. "Arnold." She says, her voice quivering.

He pulls her closer by the hand still on her waist, moving it to the small of her back. "Yeah?"

She moves her hands to frame his jaw and takes in a soiled breath through her nose, brushing her nose against his before pulling back. "There's something I need to tell you."

He brushes his thumb across her cheekbone again, "Anything."

Her eyes meet his, seeing the same pensiveness he's seen all night. But after a moment, he realizes she's just staring into his eyes, making no motion to tell him what's been bugging her. She puts her hand on top of the one that's on her cheek and her eyes drift shut. "I want us to be together."

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 **A/N: Short chapter, I know, but it felt right. And remember, next chapter will be rated M, so adjust your search parameters accordingly. I'll try to make it tasteful, if you want, I will label said scene and you can skip over it, but it won't be a real graphic, it will be more about them talking about everything else, putting everything on the table. Just wanted to warn you. **


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Somewhat of a longer chapter. And here it all gets put out on the table. Hope you guys like it, and a reminder. The rating did get changed to M. I would greatly appreciate some feedback on this chapter! Thanks!**

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Shaky hands turn the key in the deadbolt, then trembling their way to the knob. He closes his eyes and takes a long, beep breath. Breathe, that's it, just breathe, Soldier. He pushes the door open and pulls the keys out of the knob and tries to toss them casually onto the table next to the door but fails when he feels the blood flood out of his arm. The keys hit the wall and clatter to the ground. He stutters out a groan of embarrassment and turns to find her closing the door behind her, back turned toward him.

With the soft click of the knob, he slowly starts toward her, drawn in by the soft, white glow of the skin on her shoulder. Her hand comes into his view when she reaches for the deadbolt, and his breath fans off her when she clicks it shut. When it does, she jumps slightly, lets out a small yelp, and spins around. Her eyes wide, but only for a second as she finds his eyes, then they soften. "I didn't meant to scare you."

She smiles and shakes her head. "It's alright." She says on a lighthearted chuckle. He reaches down and takes the straps of her purse from her hands, gently pulling it from her grasp and setting it on the table where his keys are supposed to be. Her hand finds his on it's way back and entwines their fingers. He can feel them tremble inside his grasp, which catches his attention. He looks up to her and sees her eyes looking down at their enjoined hands. He can see her shoulders rising and falling with her deep, steadily quickening breath.

He moves his other hand to her jaw, cups her cheek, and pulls her eyes to look at him. He brushes his thumb across her cheekbone softly before he decides to ask. "Is something wrong?"

Her voice cracks in her throat while her hand mewls inside his. After a moment, she shakes her head. "No." She covers the hand cradling her face with hers. "Everything's fine."

"Then you-"

"Yes." She stops him. "I want us to be together, Arnold. No matter what."

He fends off the smile he feels wanting to split his face in half and takes the last step forward they need to be pressing against each other and slowly works his lips over hers. The shiver in his spine and the cold sweat that broke out over his skin, which is suddenly making it feel as if the silk, button up dress shirt he's wearing is very constricting. Her breath is shaking as it passing into her mouth over his lips. His hands move to her waist and pull her body against his, making her hands press against his chest. With another passionate kiss, her hands fist the fabric and twist it toward her.

His mouth rebellious ventures off her lips and down her jaw line to the column of her neck, where his tongue can feel her pulse race. In his ear, he can hear her breath shake and quiver as her arms go around his shoulders. Sign of encouragement, his hands take her legs and wrap them around him. Her nails dig into his shoulders, to the point where it actually stings. "Arno- _oo!_ " She yelps with the feeling of his teeth marking her. With a long breath out, her body still mewling uncontrollably against his, her voice vibrates in his ear. "Arnold, slow down."

The hands holding her legs around him tighten for a second and his lips return to hers. "I thought after five years..." He stops to kiss her, "we'd be done by now."

She chuckles once before returning his kiss and tightening her grip on his shirt at the shoulders. "Well," She starts again as he resumes his caressing of her jaw line, "I just think that-that... uh... that we sh-should..."

A guttural moan erupts from the back of his throat as he presses forward... sending her into an almost violent spasm.

"Alright, stop stop _stop stop_ _STOP!"_ Her arms are violently shoving him off her and he's left grasping at air. Shocked, he watches her speed her way through the main room of his apartment, palms pressed to her forehead, panting with a very evident shake in... god, she's shaking.

"Helga, what's wrong?" He asks, taking a step toward where she is at the sliding glass door.

"Arnold, I-I've been trying... all night to try and te... tell you something. I-I-I thought that I could just ignore it and let my self work through it in my head, but..."

He honestly doesn't know how to act, how he's supposed to act, what she wants from him, if anything. He's felt her wanting to tell him something ever since he picked her up, but he figured it was that she wanted them to be together. He tries fruitlessly to relax himself. "What is it?" Is all he can manage to muster up after a new feeling just washed over him. The feeling of guilt and shame because he felt he just assaulted her.

She turns back toward him, but doesn't look at him. Instead, looking toward the wall. "When I was kidnapped, in Ethiopia, I told you about the bandits that stormed the village I was sent to."

"Yeah, you said you hid the children in the pews of the church, but they found you and forced you outside."

Her blank expression that still harbors nerves finally cracks and screws together as tears flow down her cheeks. "When I started to hear gunfire, I made the children get in between the pews and kneel down, while I went to go put something in front of the door. Right as I got up to it, it burst open and he knocked me to the ground."

He can feel his gut twist in anger.

She sniffles and tries to regain the strength she had in her expression before continuing. "He grabbed my hair and dragged me back inside and he..." She stops, but he knows. All he can do is ball his fists up tightly enough to where it hurts. They were human traffickers. If she wasn't American and worth so much to them as a random, she might have been sold off quickly. But all he can do now is relive every bullet he fired and every single one of those pieces of trash he killed. She breaks again and another fresh wave of tears fall down her face. "They raped me." Her words are barely understandable.

He has to close his eyes and stop himself from screaming in sheer hatred.

"I tried to fight them off, but they said they'd kill me." She says as she breaks down, clenching her gut with her arms and doubling over as her tears pull her to the ground. And when he looks over to her, how much this hurting, how much she's been hiding from him, for months, the memories of that last op vanish from her mind. Before he can figure out to decide against it, he's leaping across the room to her, wrapping his arms around her to catch her from falling to her knees in anguish. He slowly lowers her to the ground, and she shows no protest as she crawls inside his arms on the floor , hiding her face from the world in his chest.

Her body wracks with sobs, every one making his arms squeeze her tighter.

She sniffles again and moves her head against his chest. "He out his gun in my mouth, and he-"

"Helga, do you remember Little Red Riding Hood?"

"What?" She asks again, expression now conveying confusion as to why he veered so far off topic.

"The story, Little Red Riding Hood? Do you remember at the end of the story, the Huntsman comes in and cuts Little Red Riding Hood out of the Wolf's stomach?"

"Yeah, but, what does-"

"Do you remember what I told you I did after I got out of the military?"

She looks off to the side, thinking back. "Yeah, you said you did some... contracting work, why?"

"As you know, the United States government maintains a strict policy that forbids negotiating with terrorists, by any means. So when an American citizen is captured by a hostile organization, most of the time, they can't do anything. After I got rescued from being captured, I was sent to recover at Walter Reed, in DC. I was there for about two weeks before I was approached by someone in a suit, seemed important. He said he reviewed my service record and wanted me to be part of a new military initiative, code named Operation Huntsman."

"Huntsman for... Little Red Riding Hood?"

"It would be a highly classified black op. It was to be made up of two members of every elite branch of military. Two marines, two SEALS, two special forces... and two Rangers. Our job would be to use top security satellite images, surveillance MQ-1 drones, so forth, to locate US citizens being held by foreign organizations the US government deemed hostile. We would go in quietly, eliminate any threats and retrieve our target and get them home. It was all very high risk and due to the state of our operation, if we were to get captured, in most of the countries we operated in, it would be considered an open act of war."

"Why are you telling me this, Arnold?" She tries to ask.

"One of our last missions was out of the Congo. A volunteer with the Peace Corps was being held by a group of smugglers known in the area to deal in human trafficking." Her breath catches. "It was a routine mission, in and out. My partner and I, the other Ranger, were the first entry team, in charge of establishing a foothold and contact with the hostage." Her head turns up and she looks at him with stained eyes. "We hit the base at oh two hundred hours, cut the power while our sniper took out the guards in the tower, then my partner and I moved into the base, to the second floor where our recon showed the hostage was being held."

"Arnold..."

"We split up after taking out four or five of them. I went down a hall and saw someone come out from around the corner and point his gun at something. I reacted and put a bullet through his forearm, then while he clutched his arm, I put two more rounds in his back, then moved forward toward the door when I saw her." She moves out of his arms, sitting up and looking at him with a straight brow. "She was shaking like a dead leaf in a hurricane. She was so scared. I checked my rifle and moved toward her. I could hear her muffled sobbing over the gag she had in her mouth. I asked if she was okay, and pulled down her gag. All she did was scream. At the top of her lungs."

"It was you?"

"I called over my comm that I had secured the hostage, while the rest of the team secured the compound. I put her bounds around my neck and walked her outside. I got her outside and put her on our truck on the way to the nearest US embassy."

"It was you that night, wasn't it. It was you who saved me."

He moves his arm out from behind her back, unbuttons the buttons on his sleeve and slowly rolls it up, revealing the tattoo down his forearm, reading 'NO EMOTION' in bold letters. She grabs it and pulls it up to her. Her fingers trace it for a second before her wide eyes shoot back to him. Words catch in her throat as her eyes turn back down to his tattoo.

"I really wish you'd say something." He says finally, feeling anxious the more her fingers trace the letters of his tattoo.

"Wha..." She sighs and the emotion still lingers in the edges of her features, flakes of anguish wanting to retake her. She closes her eyes and seems to push it away again. "I've been putting on a brave face for the world for... god, it feels like forever. But the truth is..." Her voice cracks as her pain clenches her throat. "The truth is I haven't had a decent nights sleep that isn't interrupted by nightmares in months. The one night I did was the night I stayed here a couple weeks ago. I haven't even been able to let anyone touch me... except you, really."

"Wait, but... what about Roy?"

She chuckles bitterly. "That's the real reason he grabbed me. He wasn't buying any more of my excuses."

"You had to give excuses?" She looks up to him, conveying a statement saying that she knows what she did. "You haven't told this to anyone, have you?"

"You're the first person to know what really happened to me other than my therapist." She says while pushing a strand of hair back behind her ear.

"Therapist?"

"I see him four times a week. Have been since I got rescued." She says as if it's something to be ashamed of.

"Helga, if you're telling me all this to tell me to back off, I understand."

"No, Arnold." She scolds, looking him in the eye for what feels like the first time all night. He knows it's not, but it feels like she's been hiding. "I meant what I said before. I want us to be together. I-I just... I'm afraid that-"

"That you'll have a flashback." She nods and burrows herself into his chest again. He lets out a deep breath and presses his lips to her scalp. "I have an idea." She looks up to him curiously. "Come with me."

He gently urges her off of him so he can stand up, takes her hands and pulls her toward his bedroom, removing her fingers from his soft grip only to switch on the bedroom light. He walks backward toward the edge of his bed, standing the two of them at the edge, smiling softly at her, gently holding her hands.

"I want to try something." Helga nods after a trepidation argument with herself lasting only a second. "I want you to lay down." She silently complies, situating herself so she's laying on her back in the middle of his queen sized mattress. He then moves to the other side and lays down next to her, supporting himself on one elbow, smiling down at her. "Take my hand." He says and lifts the hand with the elbow supporting him and she takes hold of it tightly with the hand closest to him. "Take a slow, deep breath." She draws in a long, slow, deep breath. "And out." Then she lets it out just as slowly as when she took it in, and he can feel her tight grip slacken as she does. "And again." She repeats the motion.

He's nervous this won't work. That it will all blow up in his face and he will end up spending the night staring at the starless sky above the city on his balcony. But the risk assessment is nothing compared to what he will gain if it does work. Most importantly, he wants to help her. The people who hurt her, who raped her are dead. For sure, they're dead. They're gone, and all that's left to deal with is the scars. But that is often the most painful part.

"Try to clear your mind. Push everything out except for this, right here, this moment, with me, okay?" She closes her eyes after taking a few audible breaths, and nods. "I want you to keep your eyes open and focused on me, okay?" She nods somewhat nervously this time. "And if at any point, you start to feel the slightest bit uncomfortable, or if you feel you just want to stop, I want you to say so and I'll stop, okay? Don't put yourself through something you don't want to for me, okay?"

She lets out a little bit of a shaky breath that evens out near the end. "Okay."

He takes his free hand and places his fingers on her abdomen, slowly fanning them out until his palm is flat against her stomach. "Do you remember the day I asked you out?" He asks, seemingly out of nowhere as he moves his palm in a slow circle against her stomach.

Her eyes close as she nods. "Yeah, I do."

"Open your eyes." Her eyes open again and instantly fall on his. "Keep them open." Her slow breathing is audible as his hand moves in a slow, gentle circle, edging lower with every motion. "Do you remember what I was wearing?" He asks, looking into her eyes.

"That was five years ago, Arnold." She says with an airy voice that somehow still harbors a bit of irritation at his ludicrous question.

"I remember you were standing at your locker after school. And you were wearing that old grey beanie you always wore."

"I loved that thing." She quips, defending her fashion choice to him.

He chuckles softly and feels himself smile a little brighter as he does, which makes the corners of her parted lips perk upward. His hand keeps running in a slow, steady circle, moving lower as he massages her lower abdomen. "And I remember you had on that faded pink hoodie, and you had the sleeves rolled up, and a blank yet... very contempt look on your face as you dug through your locker."

"You remember all that?" She asks, her breath catching heavily as she finishes her question when his pinky finger reaches her edge.

"I do..." He stops circling his hand and starts moving his pinky finger against her, then slowly moving his other fingers to replace it, as slow as he can. "And I also find it rather heartbreaking that you don't."

"Faded red plaid shirt with snap buttons, sleeves rolled up to the middle of your forearms with a teal blue t-shirt underneath and black denim jeans. You hadn't shaved all week, so you had a bit of scruff that made you look-" She cuts herself off, and he halts his motions. Her mouth hangs open, but her eyes remain on his, keeping to his orders that she keep her eyes focused on him.

"Made me look what?" He asked as he continues his slow, steady circles against her.

"... I don't know, scruffy?" She shrugs, raising a brow.

"Oh, come on. Rhonda made me shave every two days with a straight razor, and the military has regs on things like that. How'd I look with scruff?"

She lets out another shaky breath, "You looked really hot."

His smile breaks apart his face, and it's honest. "And here I thought you didn't care about that kind of thing."

"I don't, but..." She stops herself as the slightest squeak of a moan escapes from her throat. Her shoulders shiver and she closes her eyes as her body convulses forward.

"Open your eyes, Helga." He softly commands as he steadily increases the tempo of his motions against her slowly moistening center. Her eyes open and it isn't until then that he realizes her pupil's are dilated. "I don't suppose you remember what I said when I asked you out?"

"You said..." She lets out a breathy moan. "You asked what it would take to get me to go on a date with you."

"And what did you say?"

She lets out another shaky breath as he presses harder against her, starting to move his thumb in what seems to be just the right place. "I looked around and asked you who put you up to it and how much you were getting because I wanted a cut."

"You were still suspicious when I dropped you off."

She smiles and lets out a belt of laughter. "I still am." He laughs and presses his thumb hard against her as his fingers gently dig into her center through the fabric of her cotton underwear. "Oh, Arnold." Her eyes close and she squeeze his, while her other tugs on his bedspread, her legs rising and her chest lifting off the mattress.

"Open your eyes, Helga."

Her eyes pop open amidst heavy strain, wanting to keep them closed and ride what he's doing to her out. She lets out strained moans and with another quick flick of his thumb, her whole body convulses up against him, pressing up against his hand, her limbs digging into the bed, every muscles she has straining as she rides out the longest orgasm he's ever seen. The hand he's not holding covers the one he's using to do all this and keeps it there, want it not to be removed as her back still arches off the bed. After a few more violent aftershocks, she falls back down to the bed, sated.

With heavy breath and sluggish motions, she swings her head back to look up at him. Her hand lifts up and cups his jaw, her thumb grazing just under his eye. "That was amazing, Arnold."

"I hope you understood what I was trying to do."

She nods, her movements still slowed by her body still being flushed. "I do." Her eyes move down to his stomach, followed by her hand still being loosely held by his moving out of his soft grip and running down along his stomach. But he catches her wrist before she gets too far.

"We'll take it slow, okay?" She lets out a long breath and nods. "In the meantime, how does getting through the night without having nightmares sound?"

"You can't know for sure I won't have one, Arnold." She tells him, seeming to shrink in her own fear and insecurities in the blink of an eye.

"I'll be right here, Beautiful." He says, brushing his knuckles over her cheek.

She smiles and starts to scoot herself closer into his side, while he moves his arm under her and around her shoulders, hugging her to him. Her arm goes around his midsection and pulls him to her, her leg vines itself around his like a weed, and her breath goes through the openings of his button up silk shirt, sending rushes of cool air down his stomach. And in no time at all it feels like, she's fast asleep, yet still digging herself into his side and hugging him to her like a lifeline that he seems to be to her.

They're both still fully dressed, not under the covers and it's fairly chilly in his apartment, he even still has his ankle piece on. And he's slept in far worse situations. But right now, it feels like he would go through all those far worse situations all over again just to have what he does now.

Her.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: Thank you Internet, you have proven how foul and terrible the human race is.**

 **You know what I'm talking about.**

* * *

"Come on, Helga. Weren't you on the track team back in high school?" He says amidst his even breathing.

She smiles, her pony tail flopping from side to side gracefully. "Cross Country, Football Head."

He smiles at her use of his old nickname. "Then why are you falling behind?" He teases, pushing his stride to lengthen just a little more.

"I thought we were just jogging, but if it's a race you want..." She says over her own even breathing.

"Just so you know, Helga, I had to run a two miles in under fifteen minutes to pass Ranger school."

All she does is crack a lopsided grin, narrow her blue eyes, and take off ahead of him in a sprint. He laughs and lets her get a few strides ahead of him before he takes off, quickly gaining on her. He passes her and then feels her hand clench his sleeve in an attempt to slow him down. It falls flat and all he can hear now is her cursing at him as she falls behind. He slows to a stop just past the park bench they had started from.

He places his hands on his hips and takes a few breaths to get his pulse under control. He's two breaths in before she comes slowly running up, her feet slamming down onto the path as she slows to a stop, panting heavily. She doubles over, bracing herself against her legs. "You... you cheated!"

"My five mile time on my PFT was thirty two minutes, Helga. You think some girly girl is gonna beat me?" He says smugly.

She's sending a barrage of balled up fists toward his mid section, while he lets out belts of laughter and crosses his arms over his chest. "I'll show you girly girl!"

He catches her wrist as her right fist half playfully flies toward his torso. It's then that their eyes lock. It may be just the adrenaline from the run, but his heart leaps inside his still rising chest. "I like girly girls."

Her mouth closes from hanging open, her eyes still staring widely up at his. "Then you're out of luck, bucko."

"I don't know." He says, reaching down to take her other hand, fanning his fingers out so he laces his fingers together. "I consider it lucky that I get to do this." He leans forward and presses his lips to hers. It only takes a second for the kiss to make her weight start falling toward him. He kisses her deeper then leans back. She leans back and he looks up to see her brow raised up, eyes closed and lips still puckered out. He chuckles to himself, she did that the first time he kissed her after their second date.

Her eyes flutter open and her mouth closes. "You still cheated."

* * *

"So, did you keep in touch with anybody after graduation?" She asks him, walking casually next to him in her work out clothes, consisting of a pair of pink yoga pants and a Hillwood University t-shirt.

"Not really. The military kind of kept me busy, you know what I mean? I'm sure you had trouble keeping in touch with your friends while you were in Africa."

She lets out a hollow chuckle. "You have to have friends first."

"Oh, come on." He says and taps her arm with his elbow. "You had friends. What about Phoebe?"

She scoffs and widens her eyes. "You mean before or after she skipped middle school and went on straight to high school?"

"I thought you two kept in touch through e-mail."

"Right, cause I had access to my e-mail account in Tanzania." She cracks.

"You didn't try to get back in touch when you got back?"

"Nope." She says dismissively.

He wants to dig deeper. Especially about this. Phoebe was the only real close friend she had. But after they all finished elementary, she went straight on to high school, then only spent two years there before getting invited to Yale, then MIT. After that, she went onto to work for the Defense Department. Well, occasionally. Most of the time, she teaches mathematics at Stanford. But from the few conversations that he managed to work his way into with her when they were dating, he knows that Phoebe was one of the very few people to earn Helga's full trust. Sometimes, it seems he doesn't even have it.

"What about you, you didn't keep in touch with Gerald?" She asks.

With that seemingly off handed question she's using to direct the conversation back onto him, he feels his gut clench. "Uh-no. Haven't talked to him."

He keeps walking but feels her tug on his shoulder. He turns around and she's stopped with a half lidded glare. "Alright, what was that?"

"Well, you did it." He defends himself and steps up to her.

"Yes, but you accepted that I don't really like to talk about that sort of thing unless you want to go through an argument first."

He sighs and looks away. He really doesn't want to talk about what happened with Gerald, because he knows that she won't accept why Gerald won't talk to him without having to tell her something that he swore him to secrecy. But when she leans to the side to put herself in his line of sight, he decides to just tell her. He already knows that Gerald won't ever find out because he won't ever speak to him.

He nods to the side, motioning that they should keep walking, not before his eye sight goes past her to a man fiddling with a parking meter about a hundred feet away. They keep walking and he starts. "In seventh grade, Gerald's brother joined the Marines. Did it in the post 9/11 patriotic duty craze. Gerald was proud of him at first. Worried, but proud. But one day in the eight grade, he didn't show up to school. I stopped by that afternoon to drop off his homework, but when his dad answered the door, it looked like he had been crying. I could hear Timberly in the living room sobbing and her mother trying to sooth her. It all just clicked, what had happened."

He can almost hear the questions she wants to ask. He waits to hear them, but they never come. So he continues.

"I went up to Gerald's room, and he was just lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He wasn't crying, but I could tell that he had been. He still had streaks going down his cheeks. I remember never being so clueless as to what to say as I did then." He has to stop. That feeling just washed all back. The lump in his throat, as if a clump of words is just sitting in there trying to figure out what order they go in.

"Jamie-o died overseas." She says, having figured it out by now.

"IED in Afghanistan. After that, Gerald always had a lot of resentment toward the military, toward the government in general, really. He blamed them for letting his older brother die for a cause he never really believed in."

"I don't remember hearing about his brother dying in Afghanistan."

"That's because he didn't tell anyone. As far as everyone else knew, Jamie-o was still off at college. He made me swear that I'd never tell anyone. He didn't want anyone to look at him differently."

"So... when you joined the military..."

"He took it as a betrayal. He knew that I knew he thought the military had taken his real brother. But when I joined the military, he took it as another brother leaving him for a government that would just use him and discard him when they were done. His words." He says, looking over to her briefly.

"You didn't even go to see him when you got home from your first tour?"

"No. I only had a few months, and I had a few things that I needed to take care of."

"So, you haven't talked to him since you left?"

"No."

"Hmm." She hums and looks back toward the ground.

He knows what she's thinking. Maybe he should give him a call, go over to his house, see if he still lives there. Maybe try to salvage some sort of friendship. After all, Gerald was always a brother to him. He helped him through his break up with Lila, then with Rhonda, started to when he told him that Helga had left him. He even said when they started dating that he'd never seen him fall for anyone as quickly as he did for Helga. And when he falls, he falls hard. But with Helga, he was really falling. Gerald didn't even try to stop him either.

They walk for a few more minutes in silence, back toward his apartment. It's after something in the window of a passing shop catches his eye that he notices that the same guy had been following them for the last four blocks. It's then that a crawling feeling creeps up his spine. He pulls out his wallet from his pocket, but drops it to the ground, then turns around to pick it up, casting a quick glance toward the man following them. He isn't trying very hard to keep from being noticed, he has a camera bag with him. He's short, portly, balding, and looks like he smells of cheese.

He breaths a heavy sigh and puts his wallet back in the pocket of his gym shorts. He turns back around and takes Helga's hand. "Hey, how 'bout I treat you to breakfast? There's a diner not too far from here."

"Sure." She says with a smile.

He flashes her a smile and they quickly head towards the small diner just a few blocks from his apartment. He swings open the door, letting her go ahead of him, and puts a hand on her back as she passes him, looking at the man who's been following him, whose across the street, trying to act like he doesn't notice he's been made. The waitress smiles, an older black lady, and tells them to seat themselves, and that she'd be with them in a few minutes. Arnold points them toward a booth against a window toward the back. He sits facing the front, looking out the window briefly to see how long it would take this guy to follow them in.

"How are you two this morning?" The waitress says, putting two sets of silverware down in front of them before pulling out her pad of paper. "What can I get you to drink this morning?"

"Coffee is fine." He says with a small smile.

"Same." Helga says, unawares that the man following him just walked through the door and casually sat down at the counter, setting his camera bag down on the stool next to him. The waitress brings the coffee pot, pouring them both a cup of what is sure to be watered down Maxwell House, which is bad enough when it's made right. While she does, he gets an idea.

After a few minutes, they order and wait, talking about unimportant topics, classes, grades, weather. Which is oddly relaxing. They eat, continuing the conversation, to the point where he's forgotten about the guy whose been following him all morning. "Alright, if you're so smart, what was my favorite song in high school?"

"What's Next, by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy." He answers quickly.

She bites back a smile and crosses her arms, shaking her head.

"You ready to go?" He asks after a minute taking in her defeat.

"Yeah, just let me go to the bathroom first."

She gets up and goes to the bathroom on the other side of the diner. When the waitress comes by with the check, he stops her. "Hey, uh... don't look, but that guy at the counter?"

"Mhm." The waitress nods, leaning in to keep it between them.

"That's my sisters ex husband."

"Really? Gorgeous girl like that got together with him?"

"She was young. I tried to tell her it was a mistake, but if you knew my sister... well..."

"So, what's the problem, honey?"

"He's a real bad guy, she's called me to come and get her on more than one occasion. He's been following us all morning."

"Really? She didn't seen too stressed about it."

"I told her to ignore him. Act normal. But I don't want to take her out of her with him sitting there. I'm afraid he might try something. Do you think you could uh..." He taps his fingers against his coffee cup, and she looks down, "get rid of him for us?"

She cracks a grin and nods. "You got it, Honey." He smiles a thankful smile and watches her go around the counter with the coffee pot. "Let me refill that for you, sir." She starts to pour the coffee into his cup then it's only a second after that that the pot slips from her hand and the hot coffee goes into his lap. He yelps, and falls off his stool. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Me and my clumsy hands!" She grabs a few napkins and hands them to him. He audibly groans and throws his arms down. "You can wash yourself off in the bathroom, honey. I'm so sorry!" The waitress cast a glance in Arnold's direction, cracking a smile and winks.

He mouths the words 'thank you'.

He quickly gets up, grabs the paper off the table next to them, them grabs the camera bag, quickly going outside and dropping it into the metal trash can outside the door, dropping the news paper on top of it. It's then that Helga comes out of the bathroom to find Arnold standing at the door, holding it open for her with a smile.

* * *

He knocks on the door, bag in hand and waits.

The door opens and he's greeted with a contempt stare and a sigh. "You know, there's this thing that people use when they want to come over, it's called a phone."

"I need you to look at something for me." He says, holding up the bag on his way inside.

Making his way over to her couch, he sets the bag down on the table. "Come on in." Rhonda says, closing the door.

"Someone was following me this morning." He says.

Rhonda makes her way over to the couch and sits down in front of the grey square bag. "I'm fine, thanks. So nice of you to ask. I forgot what a gentleman you are."

"Not now, Rhonda." He says, pacing in front of her. She unzips the bag and pulls out the camera. "Well, whoever it was, they were a pro." She says, looking over the camera.

"How can you tell?"

"Well, I'm no expert, but I have been to my fair share of high society parties. And with those comes paparazzi. This camera goes for a grand, easy."

"Something like that has to be registered with someone."

"I'll have my friends out in HPD run the serial number. But now to see what's on here." She flips open the side and pulls out the memory card, then grabs her laptop and pops the card in. Arnold goes over next to her but doesn't sit down. After a few moments of waiting with his arms crossed, Rhonda has the first picture pulled up. "Well, that's a picture of you alright."

"That was this morning. What else is on there?"

"Well, you and Helga. Wow... she looks _great_ for being a hostage for seven months."

"Rhonda, focus." He commands.

She clicks to the next picture. "You and Helga, you and Helga, you and Helga, you and Helga running, you and Helga kissing, you, you and Helga, a picture of some random building-"

"Wait..." He leans in and feels his heart compress. "That's Helga's dorm."

"If he was following you, why would he take a picture of Helga's dorm?"

He hardens himself, "Keep going."

"You and Helga, dressed very nicely." That was last night. "You and Helga at Nemo's. You took her to Nemo's?! How'd you get a window table on a Friday?"

"He's a friend of mine, stay focused, Rhonda."

"You and Helga... Hmm... just Helga. Just Helga, just Helga, Helga walking alone, Helga coming out of a building, Helga sitting on a bench, Helga talking on the phone. Helga, Helga, Helga, Helga." She keeps clicking but stops reading them off. They're all of Helga. "Arnold, I don't think this guy was following you."

"No," He says with his phone already to his ear. "He was following Helga."


	14. Chapter 14

"Hello?" Her questioning voice asks, filling him briefly with relief that she answered and sounds unaware.

"Hey Beautiful." He says in a happy voice that almost makes him sick to his stomach when combined with the nerves.

"Hey!" Her responds in the tone of voice that says a smile just broke her face in two. "I thought you didn't have a cell phone."

"Well, I never really had a reason to get one before I felt a need to talk to you as much as I can." He lies. He catches Rhonda's eyes as he turns around in his pacing in front of her picture windows. Her brow is knotted and throbbing with disapproval.

"Awww, I don't remember you being so needy." She kids.

He stops and looks down to the sidewalk, taking a quick scan of the driver seats of the cars parked on the curb. "Hey, listen, you still working on homework?"

"Yeah, I have a paper due in education history tomorrow that I've neglected."

"I was just wondering if you wanted me to bring you dinner, keep you company." He's stopped by Rhonda mouthing the words 'tell her' very broadly. He responds by looking away and continues to pace back and forth in front of the window.

"I would love that, but I actually need to focus on this, and having you here won't let me do that."

"You saying I'm distracting?" He asks, momentarily caught up in the conversation.

"Very." She says pointedly.

He forces out a chuckle. "Well, I'll let you get back to it then."

"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Alright Beautiful, call me of you need anything."

"Will do, Football Head, Bye."

"Bye." With that, he snaps his phone closed and is already on his way toward the door in a rush, mainly to avoid Rhonda's blazing gaze.

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Rhonda exclaims right as his hand hits the knob. "You're not going to tell her what's going on?"

"Not until I know what is going on." He says quickly and opens the door.

"Arnold, you _have_ to tell her. Some one is out there stalking her, she needs to know that!"

"Not before I do." He says coldly and closes the door. He's at the elevator and can hear her groan loudly.

He takes in a long breath and hardens himself, putting on another version of himself, a different mindset, the soldier, the Ranger, stepping out of his civilian mannerisms. The doors slide open and a different person steps out.

* * *

He sits in the cafe on campus at a table by the window with a book open and held up and a small note pad on the table.

He wasn't worried about her being watched once he knew she was doing homework. She prefers to do homework in her dorm room, and her window faces the alley in the back of the building. He snaps his eyes up for a split second to the grey sedan parked on the opposite side of the street of her dorm building. He made him right as he pulled in the parking lot. He blindly takes down a note reading 'rental car/ local?' while pretending to read. He looks back toward the car and sees his target readjust himself in his seat, putting his arm out the window.

He's obviously not going to leave on his own. Arnold flips his notebook closed, snaps his book shut, then makes his way out of the cafe and toward his car. He opens his trunk and tosses the notepad and book into the backseat, then grabs an old flannel shirt he threw back here on a hot summer day. He closes the hatch to his trunk and then walks over to the walk way median and over to the small tree planter. He puts the shirt down and rolls it around, then throws it on. He then gently digs his hands into the dirt and runs them over his face.

He jogs across the street, on the same side his target is parked. He moves into an alley, going to a dumpster and picking up a newspaper lying on the ground next to it. He then opens up the dumpster and, to his luck, finds exactly what he's looking for. He takes another breath and walks back out onto the street, at a much slower, slumped over pace. He shuffles his way up to his car, over to the driver side then squeezes the trigger on the spray bottle. "Aw, aw man, come on!" The man in the car exclaims.

He just swabs the wad of dirty newspapers across his windshield in a slow, lethargic motion. He then puts the spray bottle in one hand and holds it out to his target. "Man... gotta be kiddin' me." He groans and thumbs out two singles from a wad of crumpled bills.

He puts the money in Arnold's hand, but in one swift motion, Arnold grabs his wrist and sends a quick but strong punch across his jaw, knocking him out.

* * *

"Aww man..." He groans and moves his jaw around with his hand, "what the hell did I put in that flask?"

"You really shouldn't carry around this much cash." Arnold says.

He blinks hard after shaking his head and looks up to him from his place on the ground in the alley. "The hell are you?" He asks in a thick north east accent.

Arnold sifts through his wallet a bit more. He pulls out a card and holds it up. "Don Dontella, Private Investigating Services."

"Man, I think you knocked out a crown." Don says with his finger digging into his mouth.

"You expect me to believe that's your real name?" Arnold asks, looking through more of the cards.

"It's good for business."

"You were following a friend of mine." Arnold says and puts the wallet in his back pocket.

Don awkwardly stumbles up off the ground, his crack violently flashing Arnold in the face as he does. He lets out a breath after he's standing up straight and tugs on his wind breaker. "I follow a lot of people, guy."

"You have three seconds before I get violent." He threatens and crosses his arms.

"Alright, Alright." Don says and holds up his hands. "Some guy called me up, bout a month ago."

"Who?"

"Man, I dunno." He says with a shrug of his shoulders. "He didn't give me his name, I didn't ask."

"Someone asks you to find someone and you don't ask any questions?"

"Thanks to the internet, the market for my profession has gone down the toilet. I gotta take what I can get." He defends.

"Who was it you were hired to find?"

"I don't know, some girl."

"Who?" He asks, firmer.

"Client privilege, guy." Don answers, rolling his shoulders forward. Arnold uncrosses his arms, balls his fists, and steps off the wall a single step menacingly. Don holds up his hands in surrender immediately. "Pataki! Name was Helga Pataki."

The muscles in his back tense along his spine and go down his arms.

"Guy offered me half up front, and half when I found her."

"You've been following her for weeks."

"I charge by the day. I figured the longer it takes me, the more I get." Arnold narrows his eyes and cocks his head to the side. "I haven't had a payin' gig in months, I got a divorce settlement to pay off." He defends himself.

"The guy who hired you, how'd he pay?"

Don leans back and gives him a quizzical look. "What's in it for me?"

Arnold, sick of this game, grabs his shirt and pulls him forward. "Your ability to walk." He says through clenched teeth.

Don gulps, "Cash, dead drop in the mailbox of some old empty house out in the burbs. I was supposed to pick up the rest of my payment when I called him with her location."

Arnold shoves him away. "This house, where is it?"

Don goes into his pockets, pulling out a crumpled up wad of recites and food wrappers, then pulling out a slip of paper from the middle, handing it to him. "Was empty, wasn't nobody there when I picked up my first payment."

Arnold's lungs lock up when he reads the address. He recognized it immediately. "You're sure this was the address you were given?"

"Yeah, sure." Don says with a defensive shrug.

Arnold takes a long breath and forces himself to relax. "Here's what you're going to do. You're going to call this guy who hired you and tell him that she went back overseas with the Peace Corps."

"This girl was kidnapped by bandits and you expect this guy to believe she went back?" Arnold narrows his eyes, silently asking him how he knew what she went through. "I'm a private investigator, man. I investigated."

He lets out a hard, annoyed breath. "Tell him that she wasn't going to let what happened to her stop her from helping people. You get paid the rest of your fee, I get you out of my girlfriend's life, and my girlfriend stays safe from whoever it is who hired you to find her. We all get what we want."

Don looks away, considering it, and after a moment looks back up to him and nods with a crocked smirk and sticks out his hand. Arnold looks down to it and turns, walking out of the alley way. "Hey, what about my camera? That thing wasn't cheap, ya know?"

Arnold doesn't answer and turns out onto the street.

Back at his apartment for the night, leaving Helga to her homework like she requested, he's out on the balcony, leaning on his forearms, listening to the traffic.

Why couldn't things be simple? He's sick of everything having to have some plot or conspiracy behind it, always someone out to get him, someone he cares about, loves. This is why he didn't want to go back to Iraq, why he made sure he was never promoted, like they wanted him to be. After that first firefight in that shit hole village, they wanted to put more strips on him. A part of him wanted them. Have a military career. Make more than the twenty three grand a year he made getting blown up and shot at.

But then Huntsman came along. An opportunity he wasn't given the option to pass up. No official record or involvement does have it's perks when breaking up slaving rings.

He chuckles at the thought and takes the last swig of flat beer then swirling the bottle around even though he knows it's empty. He grabs the one sitting on the table by the door and goes back inside. Coming out of the kitchenette, he meanders back into the main room, eyes going to the small, wrinkled, faded and torn photo of her. He picks it up and turns around, sitting down on the coffee table, getting squeezed by the same feeling he got when he'd look at it right before every sweep, every drill, every mission.

The clench in his stomach knowing that a girl like this actually exists somewhere out there in this fucked up place we call a world. And that somewhere, maybe she's thinking of him. Next thing he's aware of, he has this stupid phone flipped open, thumb ready to call her. Tell her everything he knows. About everything. All the things he could be black bagged for ever uttering out loud to a civilian. Just spew it all out, lay it all on someone who might, just by some miracle, understand. Or know that even if they didn't, that he just needs to say... something.

He lets out a depressing breath and closes the phone, throwing it down to the coffee table next to him with a loud clatter, then lifts up her picture again. He knows he has to tell her. At some point. And he's not stupid, like Rhonda is sure to be thinking right now if she managed to wax the hair off her brain since they dated in high school. He knows that the longer he drags this out, the more pissed she's going to be. But if anyone is aware of how she feels about him, it's Arnold.

Every day after school, when they had unofficially became official, she'd follow him up to his room, throw herself down onto his couch, let out a long sigh while pinching the bridge of her nose while knowing that she would have to go home eventually to peel her mother up off the floor. Everyday, and it only seemed to get worse. Like a linchpin was pulled out of a taught chain when he left. That's all it took. He left with their money and savings so quick someone should have wrote a country song about it. Then Olga didn't have anyone around to impress, so she took off because she couldn't figure out what she was supposed to do now that she wasn't Daddy's little girl anymore.

While Helga, the girl whom he fell for so fast it blindsided him, was stuck with Miriam, who was drinking herself into denial every morning and then into a coma every night. But Helga remained strong, stoic, and silent about it all until one day after school when they were leaving and saying their goodbyes for the day. They hugged in the friendly manner that they did before they actually started calling themselves a couple.

It started with her just moving her arms just a little tighter around his neck than normal, then with her turning her face into his neck, then letting out a shaky break through her nose. And before he knew what was wrong, she was sobbing into his shoulder in the parking lot of school. She never talked and he never asked, somehow he just knew that she just needed to cry. That she let her armor fracture just for a second, then let it shatter once she felt she could trust him with her being so bare like that.

He shakes his head clear of the memories and stands up, whipping off his shirt while going into his bedroom.

Any father who would do that to a girl like her doesn't deserve to see her again.

* * *

The camera shutter flicks, the only sound heard in the car besides his boss letting out the smoke from his cigarette. "You sure it's him?"

He looks at the screen on his camera at the man leaning over the railing of the third story apartment, comparing it to the photo of the man in a black t-shirt and a flak vest and an M4A1 hanging across his chest, helmet in his hand that's not on his rifle grip. "That's him."

"You really think he'll take the offer? He's a civilian now."

"He'll take it." His boss assures him, putting out his cigarette on the side of the car. "Soldier like that can never get enough war."

"If you say so, Sarge, but I don't think-"

"He'll take the offer." His boss stops him, lobbing his head toward him. "The only thing you gotta do is make it seems like he has a choice."

* * *

 **A/N: Don't worry, I know what I'm doing.**


	15. Chapter 15

Arnold pushes a blank piece of notebook paper back and forth across his desk with his pen, absentmindedly tuning out the discussion going on in class about foreign policy in Modern History class. He doesn't want to pay attention. He's surprised the professor hasn't asked him about his views on the subject, but he isn't wearing his field jacket, just an old button up flannel with the sleeves haphazardly tugged up his arms.

It's the Monday after confronting the PI who was following Helga, and he hasn't heard anything. It was easy to keep his resolve about telling her everything about this the first few hours. But now he feels a pull in his chest, telling him to hold onto it. She just seems so happy. She met him as he pulled up on campus, a smile lighting up her face. She waltzed up, snaked her arms around his neck, placed a kiss on his cheek and hugged him. She said she would meet him after his class and they could hang around until her first class of the day.

"I just think that these people are poor and despar..." He tunes out. Bimbo in the front of class doesn't know what she's talking about. None of them do.

He sneers and lets out a breath, as if releasing a pressure valve on his nerves.

"Of course, these people have nothing!" Some scraggly haired teenager on the opposite side of class exclaims. Kid's been going off ever since they got on this topic. "We're going into their country, going into their homes, blowing up their families, their children, and our government doesn't care. They just want power. And our soldiers kick in their doors, terrorize these people who did nothing to us, and they don't question it! They jus-"

He feels his last nerve snap. "You think we didn't question it?" He says loudly on a light chuckle, his voice catching the eyes of everyone in the classroom.

All eyes turn to him, while he's leaned back in his desk, arms crossed and looking with piercing attention at this stringy haired trendy teenager, whose glaring right back at him. "Arnold," the professor chimes in, "you have a different opinion?" She calmly asks.

He looks back up to the professor, "I was an Army Ranger for five years, I did two tours in Iraq, and was a POW," He looks back at the kid whose now sat up in his chair, "and saying that we didn't question it is about the biggest _insult_ I've ever heard."

The room is deftly silent, and he has center stage. The kid looks forward angrily, but he keeps his eyes trained on him.

"Of course we questioned it. We all did. Every minute of every day. When I had bullets flying at me and RPG's screaming past my head, you really think any of us were thinking about fighting for our country, or fighting to further the cause? You want to know why I fought? I fought for 1st Stg. Nick Coleman who took a snipers bullet to his neck a foot and a half away from me. He left behind a five year old son. I fought for CPL Jake Roland who got his leg and half of his arm blown off by an RPG when he threw himself in front of me so I could get STG Coleman out of the line of fire. You wanna know what we questioned? Why kids as young as four threw rocks at us every chance they got. Why I come home and have to listen to people like you demonize the men I fought along side and who fought along side me. We were sent there to help protect these people, and you want to know how they repaid us? They spat on us. So I get why you're this big liberal thinker that thinks all soldiers are evil trigger happy sociopaths..."

The kids eyes turned back to Arnold, whose still glaring at him, and him alone. But the room is still dead still, looking at him.

"But don't sit there and tell me I didn't question my orders, because the man who saved my life that day, Cpl. Jake Roland, put his gun to his mouth last year doing exactly that."

He can hear the kid let out a huff through his nose and look down to his desk again. "Uhmm..." The professor starts, "well, we're out of time. I'll see everybody on Wednesday."

Everyone starts to get up, silently, a few people looking at him as he lifts his bag over his shoulder, one girl smiling at him as she does. He pays it no mind but grins slightly back. He makes his way out the door, anger on a low simmer in the pit of his stomach. It's not even that he was insulting him. Of course he hated the mission, hated being in Iraq, in the desert, away from his home. But demonizing his brothers who had his back every mission they ran. It's not even out of pride for his service. Or even loyalty to the Army. There's a bond soldiers form in war that can't be broken. Eventually, even being in the military, his squad became the only family he knew, because they grew to be the only family he had. That's why he fought. That's who he ended up fighting for.

He turns out into the hall with his head down, mind lost on a reality when he could swap war stories with Grandpa. "Hey." A voice calls.

He looks up and feels his face break in a grin. He saunters up to her, just pushing off the wall opposite of the class room door and kisses him on the cheek before hugging him as a greeting. He lets himself revel in the feeling of his hands snaking themselves across her sides and enveloping her, pulling her in, the firm, tender daintiness of her body in his arms.

"I heard you in there." She says in his ear, the vibration of her voice making him shiver.

"None of them know what the hell they're talking about." He thinks out loud. She doesn't move to lean back, instead starts running her hand up and down his back, taking it as an urge for him to continue. "They either love us out of some patronizing patriotic responsibility or hate us out of some holier than thou, sycophantic human rights issue."

Her hands move to his shoulders and she steps back, looking up at him with her usual big blue glimmer. "Come on, you can talk to me about it for a while."

"Don't you have to get to class? You had that paper to turn in, don't you?"

"Class got canceled. Professor's wife went into labor last night." She says, reaching down to grab his hand and entwine their fingers. She looks back over to him with a smile after flicking her bangs out of her eyes with a small smile. "So I'm all yours."

He chuckles to himself as he pushes open the door for them. "That's always been the dream." He says, leaning closer to her as she passes in front of him. She casts an almost lustful sneer his way before he pushes against her, starting to slowly make their way through campus, mid morning.

"So..." She starts a question. He looks over and she's looking to the ground passing slowly beneath their feet, words caught on the tip of her tongue. "Why did you really join the military?" She asks quickly, words pouring out probably before she decided against it.

"What do you mean?" He told her what happened with Grandma.

"I mean, I remember everything about what you told me happened after I left, but... I always got the sense there was more to it than that." His throat closes up and he's forced to break eye contact, at the same time knowing it will cause her to prod further. She gives his hand a firm squeeze by the fingers and urges him to tell her with a lift of her brow when he looks over to her.

He lets out a long sigh as he looks back down. "After Grandma got in that car accident, I was left with everything. The bank was going after the boarding house, which I didn't know about until I got the foreclosure notice in the mail a few days after she died. They gave me a week to get everything out of the boarding house before it went back to the bank. I was in a daze for a few days, just wandering around the boarding house, constantly being taken back by how quiet it was. All the boarders had moved out, and we hadn't had a paying tenant in a while. But one day, I found myself in Grandpa's bedroom, packing up his dresser to give to Goodwill, when I came across a small wooden box. It had the emblem of the 82nd Airborne on it."

"Haven't I heard of them?" She chimes in.

He looks over to her, "They were basically the division that led the allied invasion of Normandy in World War two." He says, a proud smirk appearing on his face, even though it's not of his own volition.

Her brow lifts and seems surprised. "Wow. I never knew that."

"Neither did I. I remember opening the box and seeing all of his medals, and hearing him sing an old song he used to sing all the time. Blood Upon The Risers." He says, mind drifting away into the memory of Grandpa's voice going through the halls singing the old song sang by paratroopers. "When I went looking in his closet and saw his dress uniform hiding in the back, I was at the recruiting office that afternoon and was on a bus to basic the next week."

"So... you joined because of your Grandpa?"

"I started to remember all those times he tried to sit me and Gerald down and tell us old war stories. And the more those memories started to fester, the emptier the boarding house felt, and the more I felt I had to leave. Honestly, Helga, I don't even remember signing on that line." He slows to a stop, his hand being tugged when she takes a few steps ahead of him. He's staring off into space, remembering what is mind felt like. "I was in a haze. No thoughts actually being processed. They just seemed to stop before I knew what they were. Not feeling anything, I felt like a walking husk of a person. I was like that for years. It's like my mind shut itself off... and stayed shut off ever since."

In the blur of his focus, he can see her take a step into his space. "What brought you back?"

He feels himself brought back to reality, back to focus, feels himself regain clarity in a flash. He looks up and looks her in the eye. "You did."

She smiles a bashful smile and lets her head fall. Giving into the desire, he leans forward and presses his lips to her scalp, briefly taking in a whiff of her hair. She leans back and looks in his eyes. "You know, we really are messed up."

He laughs brightly, brighter than he remembers laughing in a long time. "That's just a mean way of saying we're interesting."

She laughs as brightly as he did, her eyes lighting up and an unbridled smile breaking apart her face. Making a thought shoot across his mind. That smile is why he can't tell her. Starting his mind racing as her laughter winds down, he decides. She has the rest of the day off, Rhonda works from home most of the time. "So," He starts, taking hold of her hands that are touching his stomach, "I've been meaning to tell you something."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I've been talking to someone, an old friend, and she's been... helping me get my head straight. I want you to meet her, if you're feeling up to it."

She smiles a smile that's rife with trepidation. "Sure."

He nods his head off to the side and they make their way, hand in hand, toward his car. After opening her door, he takes off toward her apartment. She asks who they're going to see after they turn out of the campus parking lot. He brushes her off as best he can without sounding like an ass hole. He doesn't want to tell her who it is out of fear she might demand he stop and let her out. She sighs and looks out the window the rest of the short drive through downtown Hillwood. He parallel parks right in front of her apartment building and he starts toward the door. He looks over to Helga, who's looking up at the apartment building in reverence. "You know someone who lives here?" She asks, pointing upward. "These are supposed to be some of the nicest apartments in Hillwood."

"Well... they're big." He replies, putting a hand on the small of her back as they move forward.

He flashes a smile to the doorman. "Is she in?"

"Yes, she is, go on up."

After taking the elevator up, during which he has to look over and reassure Helga with a small smirk, they step into the hallway and up to her door. He knocks twice and waits, his breath caught in the middle of his chest. He hears her footsteps approach the door, then a small shriek come through the door, followed by a quick click of the deadbolt and a turn of the knob. He takes a small step back so Helga's in front of him, and sees the door open. "Helga!" She cries with open arms.

Rhonda vices Helga in a tight hug. "Hi Rhonda." She strains. She looks over to him with a blank, very displeased look.

He narrows his eyes, lifts his brow, and nods, gesturing for her to give Rhonda a chance. Rhonda steps back, hands still gripping Helga's stiff shoulders, "Oh, it's so good to see you! Arnold just won't shut up about you."

"I'll bet." She says in a low tone, eyes glancing in his direction.

"Well, come on in, come on in." Rhonda says, stepping aside, but pulling Helga inside her apartment by the arm. "I just finished making some smoothies. You want one?" Rhonda asks as she bounces backward toward the kitchen.

"Um... sure." Helga replies awkwardly. Rhonda smiles gleefully, a little too gleefully, and goes into the kitchen. Helga grabs his forearm in a death grip once she's gone, and turns to him. "You brought me to your ex girlfriends house?" She hisses through her teeth.

"She helped me out with something, Helga." He calmly replies.

"What, your pants?"

With that, he honestly feels hurt. "Okay, I know you don't mean that."

"Arnold, Rhonda's-"

"I know, Helga. I know all the things she was. But she still helped me out with something important to me, and I want you to know about it."

She sighs, eyes going toward the kitchen when she hears the sound of glasses being clinked together. "You really have to get better at telling me things."

"What do you want from me, I'm a work in progress." He says with a shrug. She chuckles despite herself just as Rhonda comes back in, awkwardly clutching three glasses in her hands, filled with dark pink slush.

"There ya go." Rhonda says as they each take a glass. "I've been on a smoothie kick lately, hope you like 'em." Arnold narrows his eyes as Rhonda looks at him. She's obviously faking. He sees Helga take a sip as she looks in the other direction across her apartment.

"Hey Rhonda, can I use the bathroom?"

"Sure, it's just past the kitchen, can't miss it." Rhonda says with a fake as ever smile. Helga awkwardly smiles back and steps past her. As she goes, Arnold caught up in taking in her looks as she goes and glass going to his mouth, hiding a grin, he feels yet another pointy nailed hand grip his arm. He's pulled forcefully to the side.

"Ow!" Rhonda lets go after stomping a few steps, "god, why does everyone keep doing that?" He says, shaking out his arm.

"You haven't told her yet, have you?"

"Why do you think I'm here?"

"I swear, if it was possible, I'd smack some sense into you." She seethes through clenched teeth.

He nods her off and takes a sip of his smoothie. Once it hits hit tongue, his nerves kick into high gear. "Rhonda, what's in this?" He asks quickly.

"Nothing, just some low fat ice cream, ice, bananas, strawberries..."

He looks toward the kitchen, "Helga." He says, just as he hears a glass shatter as it hits the floor.

He runs into the kitchen, seeing her clenching her throat and convulsing. He falls to his knees, pulling her up into his lap, gripping her body to stop her convulsing. "Try to breath, Helga. Try to breath." Her pupils are dilated, she's struggling to breath, her hands are trembling. "Rhonda!" He yells. She's already standing there, watching in horror, frozen in place. "Rhonda, get me your first aid kit." He demands quickly. He looks back up, not wanting to take his eyes off Helga. Rhonda's just standing there. "Rhonda! Now!"

Her head shakes and she quickly moves into her bathroom. Her mouth moves over her struggling to breath, trying her hardest to speak.

"It's gonna be okay, Helga." He reassures her, cupping her cheek and running his thumb across her cheekbone. "Rhonda!" He yells for her again.

Just then, Rhonda comes in with the first aid kit. Before she can set it down, he grabs it out of her hands and opens it. He takes the large plastic shot out of the slot from the side, ripping the cap off with his teeth. Without hesitation, he jabs it into her leg, pressing the plunger in with his thumb. After a few long seconds, he pulls it out and tosses it to the side. "Breath slowly, Helga." He starts visibly breathing in and out through his mouth, setting the appropriate tempo for her. "Rhonda, get her a glass of water."

"Arnold..." She struggles to say.

He shakes his head. "It's okay, Helga. I'm right here." He says her eyes well up. She reaches for his face and puts her hand on his jawline. He pulls her into him, petting her hair as her breathing evens out. "I'm right here."

* * *

Feeling it best to take her back to her dorm, they left shortly after Helga had calmed down and regained her composure. Leaving side by side, just about to get to his car outside Rhonda's building, Arnold feels his hand being grasped. He looks back and she's stopped on the sidewalk. "What is it?" He asks.

She just looks at him, mouth hanging slightly agape, eyes darting from his down to his mouth and back. "I'm ready." She says after a few moments.

He turns to face her, "Ready for what, Helga?"

Without a word, she slowly grasps his neck and kisses him, hard and without reservation. As her lips move and kiss him even deeper, her arm goes across his back and her hand pulls his mouth harder against hers, breaking loose a moan from him. With a small pop, she lets his lips go, but keeping his senses with her. "Uhh..."

"I'm ready Arnold." She says firmly.

Clearing his throat, he tries his hardest to be rational. "Helga, if this is because of what happened up there, then-"

"It is."

"Helga..." He tries, trying to explain why it would be exploiting the situation.

"Arnold, when I felt my throat close, my mind went back to that church where I was raped." It's then that he feels his throat close. She said that with such confidence. She trusts him with this. "I fell to floor, tried to scream but I couldn't. I tried to run but couldn't move, I tried to fight back but couldn't do anything but shake and wait for it to be over. It wasn't a second more before I felt you by my side, telling me that it was all going to be okay. And the instant I saw you, I just knew it was. I knew that I was safe with you and that I could trust you more than anybody."

Feeling his heart race and a sweat break out across his skin, "So..."

"I want us to be together. I'm ready to be with you, Arnold."


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: Rating warning! This chapter contains sexual content that could be unsuitable for younger readers. Discretion is advised. Thank you.**

* * *

The drive back to his apartment could only be described as slow.

She was restless the whole time, looking ready to pounce on him over the center console, sending them into a building if that had to be the consequence. But her restlessness seemed to vanish with the assent up to his third story apartment. And what replaced it seemed to be tentativeness and apprehensiveness at best, fear and panic at worst. Her shoulders were noticeably shrunken in when he led her by the hand into his apartment and shut the door, locking it behind them. He took a silent but deep breath as he took her other hand that was jammed inside the pocket of her jeans. Her eyes finally met his, which gave him the opportunity to try and reassure her with a tender smile. She returned the gesture by a smirk sneaking its way onto her face.

He started walking backward into his bedroom, his eyes never leaving hers even after they had fallen out of view and was hiding behind her rebellious bangs that she always complained about when she'd talk about things that she thought he wouldn't listen to. He could do that with Rhonda, because Rhonda never shut up. But he listened to Helga.

He hopes he can pull this off. He wants to finally make love with her again, no question, but he wants her not to be scared of it. He can tell plainly that she's terrified right now. He can hear her trying to suppress her frantic breathing as he turns into this bedroom. He stops when he reaches the foot of his bed and turns them so they're perpendicular to it. She takes one last long breath, letting it out with a shake and refuses to meet his gaze. "Helga." He calls over to her softly. She finally looks back over to him, looking him in the eye after flicking her bangs out of the way. "If you're not certain about this, we can wait."

"I am certain." She says with feigned confidence. He lowers his head a bit, challenging her own statement with the small gesture. Her eyes nod off to the side. "Alright, I'm a bit scared, but... I don't..." She takes a large breath and looks back up to him, "I don't want to be, Arnold. I don't want to be this scared all the time anymore."

"And... you think that will happen by us having sex?" He asks almost as if it's a joke.

She lets out a sigh and rolls her eyes, not letting go of his hands that tighten a bit around his. "I only ever feel safe when I'm with you, Arnold. I've been walking around with this fear ever since I got rescued." She takes a small step toward him. "I mean, I still wake up some mornings thinking I'm back in that windowless room and it throws me into a panic. I don't want to feel this way anymore! And the only time I don't now is when I'm with you."

"Helga, I want to help you, but..." he lets out a small chuckle despite himself and shakes his head, "the only advice I got on not being scared was a drill sergeant in basic training telling me to suck it the fuck up." The look in her eyes is that of defeat. Her head falls forward and her eyes drift shut, and he feels a strong pang of guilt stab him in his stomach. He takes a breath and cups her cheek, pulling her gaze back up to his. "I can't help you get rid of your fear, Helga." She closes her eyes, "But what I can do is give you tools to so you can fight it on your own."

"What do you mean?"

He smiles and takes a step toward her, his hands going to her waist. "Helga, being shot at by people who want nothing more than to see you dead is scary. But I was trained and given tools to deal with it. I can do the same for you."

"What, give me an assault rifle and throw me out of a plane?" She asks on another eye roll.

He smiles with a small laugh and pulls her into him by her waist. "I'm not going to deprive you of sleep or put a forty seven pound rucksack on your back and make you march twelve miles or anything, but what I can do is give you a way to cope with it and get your confidence back."

She smiles the first real genuine smile he's seen since this started. "I want us to be together first." She places her hands on his shoulders, gripping the loose fabric of his open flannel shirt, edging it off his shoulders.

He snakes his arms around her mid section, pulling her into him with a grin. "Does that mean you're my girlfriend again?"

Her gaze turns more lidded and lustful as her arms go around his neck and succumbs to his hands pushing her into him. "Nothing I want more."

He smiles as he slowly kisses her already open lips. The first motion of his lips earns him a rising moan, escaping from her throat. The second earns him her fingernails digging into his shoulders, starting to tug at his flannel shirt. He moves his arms out from around her and pulls his first shirt off, tossing it against the wall of his bedroom before moving his arms back around her, pulling her in with just a little more force. There's a second where he regrets it, but it vanishes once he feels her hands pull at his sides with just as much added force.

His hands meander under the hem of her t-shirt. Once his thumb feels the warmth of the skin on the small of her back, he presses against it when his palm. He moves his hands under the hem of her shirt and around her sides. Before he makes the final decision, he feels the fabric of his black t-shirt being pulled off him. He responds with a surprised moan against her soft lips. She rips the fabric off him and he can see her eyes dart down to his chest with a dark pupils, her hands already reaching out to touch him. But they stop in front of her, and her gaze turns from wanting to fearful confusion.

He feels his excitement die out once he reads her expression and figures out what she's looking like that for. "Oh my god, Arnold..." Her thumb traces the four inch long gash along his left side, then along the large burn against his other side from when he was being held prisoner. "What did they do to you?" She asks, her fingers starting to trace over the three large gashes going diagonally down his chest, along with the other small nicks and cuts.

"Nothing they got to brag about." He says in a low voice. Her eyes find his again, and she's looking at him with a wide gaze. "When I heard the facility being breached, I slammed my thumb against the back of the chair and slipped my hand out from the binds. I stood up and waited along the wall next to the door... and when he opened it to shoot me, I grabbed him and snapped his neck in a single motion just like I was taught. Grabbed his rifle and put down three others before my company came around the corner. Once I realized I was saved I collapsed. Woke up in Walter Reed two days later."

Her hands flatten against his sides and she leans forward, kissing him softly. And with that one soft kiss, he's brought out of the sleep depriving pain from his three days held prisoner. He snakes his arms around her mid section and pulled her in, the motions of their lips getting faster and deeper with each pass. From his hands pressing against her back underneath her shirt, to pushing it up and over her head. With her arms in the air, his hands find her sides and hers find his shoulders. She pushes against his shoulder, turning him and pushing him back toward his bed.

He slowly lowers himself while she crawls up his bed above him, their lips never parting until he's settled with his head on his pillow, his girlfriend as of one minute ago on top of him. He leans up, bracing himself with his arm while he slowly moves his other hand up her spine until his finger and thumb find the strap of her bra. He stops when he feels her breath hitch. He stops kissing her and leans back, fingers frozen on the snaps of her bra. He looks into her eyes, gauging her emotions. "Go ahead." She permits him in a low voice while she brushes a stray strand of his hair out of his forehead with her middle finger.

With a quick motion of his fingers, her bra slackens and falls down between them while he fans his hand out against her back. He feels himself stopped to a halt, staring into her big blue eyes while she has one hand on his jaw and the other on his chest. "What?" She asks after a long moment of silence.

He moves his hand from her back to her face, brushing his knuckles across her cheekbone and he feels her drift into his touch. "You're too beautiful to go through what you did." She closes her eyes and cranes her head a bit, still drifting into his touch.

She sniffles, opens watery eyes, and runs her fingers down the long, jagged scar going down across his chest, "You keep talking about the strength I have." She says, running her hands over the three jagged scared that go down his chest from where they cut him with a heated hunting knife. "I can't imagine the strength you must have to have gotten through this, Arnold."

"I just wouldn't let myself die until I saw you again." That pulls a tear that's been hanging from her lashes. She grabs his wrist and moves the hand that's caressing her cheek to her lips. After letting her kiss his palm for a few seconds, he moves his hand to her neck, softly digging his fingers into the base of her skull and pulling her down, kissing her passionately, fervor she's returning every ounce of.

She pushes him back down to the bed with her lips, his hands cupping her breast one second, to sliding roughly down her side. Her hands move from disheveling his hair to reaching down to fiddle with the button of their jeans. With puffy lips, unruly moans, and impatient fingers, he feels her jeans loosen around her gyrating hips. She pulls their lips apart, sits up and starts to push her jeans down her hips as if they've caught fire. He smiles widely, wraps an arm around her mid section and pulls her down to his bed. And it isn't until he feels the bouncy thud of his mattress that he's realized what he's just done. He feels his blood freeze with guilt and sits up, giving her room to breathe.

But when he does, he's brought out of it by the sound of a giggle erupting from her throat, turning into bolstering laughter, illuminating her features. She starts kicking her legs, trying to get her jeans off hands free until her grabs her pant leg at the bottom and helps her with a swift tug, tossing them haphazardly onto the floor. He takes a long moment to admire her long, toned legs, still as supermodel-esque as they were in high school. "You have another tattoo?" She asks out of nowhere, her hand reaching for his right shoulder.

He leans up and displays the large tattoo covering the upper part of his right arm, consisting of the Ranger's shield and the 75th Ranger tab. "Got that after my first tour." He says while she's running her fingers over the lightning bot of the shield. "I also have the American flag on my back." He says with a cocky voice.

"Really?" She asks, giddily. She leans up, pulling down his shoulder and looking at the eight by six inch American flag tattoo adorning his back left shoulder. "Why'd you get that?"

"That's the result of a weekend off in New Orleans, five hundred dollars, alcohol, and a very patriotic 2nd lieutenant."

She laughs brightly, bringing him back down to her lips with a soft hand on his cheek. He can feel her fighting back a smile as he kisses her. He moves a hand to mold and massage her breast, being egged on by her pressing against his hand by leaning up off the bed. Her hands find the button of his pants, and he feels himself twinge with pleasure at the feeling of her leg crawling up and trying to push off his pants with her foot. He kisses her hard, pressing her down into the bed while he grabs her thigh and wraps her leg around him. He's rewarded with a deep moan.

Her fingers are digging into his back and his shoulders as he moves on top of her fully after kicking his pants off his feet and onto the floor. He wants to take it slow, but every time he tries, she pulls at another part of him and eggs him on further, every motion she makes forcing him to bite back the urge to let all his shackles loose and just go for it. Her hand moves into his hair again, taking a fistful of hair as she presses his lips down onto hers roughly. He takes in a nervous breath past the lump in his throat as he kisses his way down to her neck, massaging her pulse point with his tongue. She's letting out breath after ragged breath into his ear, so much so he can hear her mouthing his name, her voice too weak to actually speak.

He takes her leg and pulls it up his side, feeling her other leg hook her foot around his calve. She lets out another long breath into his ear right before he feels her hands around the waistband of his boxers. He's caught off guard by her swift action while he gently grazes his teeth across the skin of her neck. In one quick motion, she pushes them off, hooking her toes around the waistband and pulling them down until they're out of the way. He laughs against her and moves back to kiss her. "That was good." He says against her lips.

"I can't wait anymore, Arnold." She says before devouring his lips in a passionate, open mouthed kiss.

Her arms wrap around his neck into a vice grip, squeezing him to her. He can feel himself push against her soaked core, sending a heated shiver through his nerves. It's in that moment he feels the shackles of his control shatter, the tug he felt just seconds ago now pushing him forward. With two fingers, he pushes her panties to the side and delves inside her folds. At full hilt, her teeth sink into his lower lip, hearing her let out a high pitched whimper, her legs tightening around his waist, but her arms quivering around his shoulders.

He pulls out slowly, having to fight against both her tightness, and her legs pushing him into her. He then slowly creeps back in, their lips touching, but not kissing, simply breathing past each other. After repeating this ritual a few times, hesitantly, a pace was set, slow as it is. And once it was, he feels her body relax underneath his, going from a timid shake, to mewling with every slow thrust he makes into her. It's her thighs petting his sides that urge him to increase the pace and force of his motions. Once it had double, her motions getting more restless and her ecstasy rising that much more, he feels her roll them, her hands suddenly pressing against his chest, towering over him.

She continues the pace, moving back and forth against him, sending very pleasurable shivers through him. Her head is rocked back, her hips gyrating against him, her perfect figure haloed by the low afternoon light creeping in past the blinds of his bedroom. The sight of her is almost enough for this to end now. "Helga." He struggles to call out to her over the perfect motions she's making against him.

Her head rolls back forward, her hair falling down so it's covering just a part of her face, giving her a slightly devilish look, which pushes him just that much closer. He can see the gleam of her teeth when she grins at him, her nails softly digging into his pecs, the only response he gets being her ragged breath. "I haven't felt this good since the last time we were together." She manages to say.

"You know," He's cut off by her sending her hips forward with a forceful thrust, making his eyes roll back into his head, "I thought you'd be more timid." He says, feeling her hand move to his jaw. "Considering what you want through." He chooses his words carefully over the long few seconds he's rebuilding the floodgates, still being pulled in by the amazing feeling of her muscles tightly wrapped around him.

It's in that moment that her mood takes a sharp and sudden shift. The motion of her hips becomes shaky and hesitant, her head moves off to the side, her eyes closed and her expression screwing together just a touch. Reading it in the instant it happens, he leans up and cups her jaw, smoothing over her cheekbone with his thumb. Her hips have stopped and she won't open her eyes. "Helga, look at me." He softly commands. Her eyes pop open after a moment. Her pupils are slightly dilated in fear. "It's gonna be okay, Helga." He reassured, running his thumb back and forth across her cheekbone.

She takes in a deep breath and hold it for a moment before framing his face with her hands. "Arnold, hold me."

He doesn't hesitate in enveloping her in his arms, feeling her do the same with her arms around his neck, squeezing each other for dear life. He leans back down to the bed with her, softly pressing back up into her with a slow thrust upward. After a few more thrusts, she brings her head out of his shoulder and presses her forehead to his. Their pace quickly hastens again, both reading the climax they both need. Her breath is quick, her muscles tightening around him, and her cries of pleasure getting higher and higher with every quick thrust me makes into her quivering center.

He feels his tempo go off kilter as his leg muscles stiffen and feels himself spill into her just seconds after, his arms tight over her sweat slicked back. After a few long, drawn out seconds of riding out their joint orgasm, he feels his muscles loosen and turn to burning jelly. She's shaking and quivering on top of him over heavy, sedated breathing as he slips out of her. After at least a minute, she extends her legs back out and situated herself so she's laying next to him, her head on his shoulder and her arm laying dead across his stomach, both panting heavily.

He feels his eyes pull closed, and he softly plants a kiss to her hair before pulling the covers of his unmade bed over them. She burrows herself into his side once they're covered with his comforter. "Helga?" He asks once he catches his breath. After a long pause without a response, he continues. "You okay?"

She lets out a breath and heavily lifts her head off his chest, putting two fingers on his chin to bring his head down to her. He leans up and captures her lips in a soft kiss. After letting their lips sit together for a few seconds, she lets his head fall back down to the pillow, setting her head down next to his. "My worst fear has been that I'd never be able to enjoy making love with someone again. And once you came back into my life, I was afraid of what I'd have to go through to get over that feeling of what they did to me. Then once we started to get closer, I was scared to death of those memories. I was afraid that those memories would... infect us being together again."

He reaches up and pets her hair after she doesn't continue. "Did they?"

She buries her face into his shoulder. And after a moment, he feels her back jump, making his heart crack. "What will it take to put me back together, Arnold?" She asks over a throat clogged with rising emotions. "I just want to be whole again." She says just as he feels a tear his the skin of his shoulder. "I just want it to go away." She sobs.

He closes his eyes and curls her into his side, letting her cry herself out.


	17. Chapter 17

He feels his eyes open, staring at an orange light being cast against his ceiling from a space in his curtains of his bedroom. After a few blinks of his eyes, he's awake, the memories quick to come back to him, with happiness one second and guilt mixed with disappointment the next.

They fell asleep together and it was around six in the evening. Now it's around one in the morning and he's wide awake, while she's still passed out next to him, weighing him down with an arm draped across his chest and her head resting on his numb arm. She did say she's been having a lot of trouble sleeping. Admitted that she has nightmares. She's looked exhausted more than a few mornings when he's seen her over the past couple weeks. God only knows how much longer she can sleep, and he doesn't have it in him to leave her in bed alone, and at this point, going back to sleep is way past out of the question. All it takes is a few seconds and he can't go back to sleep. Side effect from Ranger school.

He takes a deep breath and looks over to her, reaching over and brushing her hair out of her face softly with his finger and smiles. The image of her shaking her head right as her memories came crashing back flashes in his mind, followed by her crying herself to sleep into his shoulder. He promised to help her. He wants her to get better. A girl like her doesn't deserve to feel that kind of pain. His own pain he can manage because at this point, he's been tempered. But he knows what he went though and what it took so he can simply feel nothing. It's not something he wants to see anyone, especially her, go through if he has a chance to help.

He brushes her hair behind her ear with a gentle finger and lays back against his pillow, going to caressing her arm mindlessly with his thumb. His mind flutters through memories aimlessly, thinking of how he got here. His last days in Hillwood, those few days when he thought he could manage the boarding house on his own with all of the regular tenants gone, and only one or two temporaries. Until his mind starts playing through his very last day in Hillwood, and what he had to do before he got on that bus to Basic Training.

It's so peaceful up there, nice and quiet. He looks over to her, seeing she's still in his 'ARMY' t-shirt and boxer shorts she sleeps in that she slipped in on her way back from the bathroom about an hour after they fell asleep. He slowly takes his arm out from underneath her head and stands up, throwing on a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, and an old long sleeved flannel shirt before going to her side of the bed and gently hoisting her up in his arms, wrapping her in a thin blanket before he does.

With skill, endurance, and finesse, he makes his way out the door, down the hall and toward the elevator. She stirs a few times, but she falls back asleep every time, and after a few minutes he's at his car, and puts her in the front passenger seat. Amazingly, she's still fast asleep. He closes the door and then gets in the other side, pulling away and heading north down the deserted streets, passing out of the city after only fifteen minutes. He continues up the coast for about an hour until the pair of headlights that have been following him for the past twenty minutes or so start getting closer and closer.

He hasn't paid them any mind, but he's going eighty, and it's only two-thirty in the morning. He takes a deep breath, reaching over the passenger seat to the pocket on the back, grabbing his normal carry piece. The headlights approach his rear, and his thumb presses against the safety, ready to act. He sees the headlights go into the other lane and start to speed around him. His hand grips tighter on the cold steel of his grandfather's 1911 as the dark red, late nineties Lincoln sedan reaches his side. He lets off the gas and lets them pass, which they do with a quickness, speeding off ahead of him at at least ninety-five. His grip loosens and he takes a deep breath to relax himself.

He closes his eyes to get a grip on himself. After his heartbeat settles back down to normal, he brings his arm back around and puts it on the headrest of the passenger seat, playing with a strand of her hair. He drives for another ten minutes or so until he goes over a dip in the road, making the car jump a bit, enough to finally stir Helga awake. He sees in his vision as her head starts to lift and her eyes start to flutter. Once they do, she jumps awake, gasping. " _Ah!_ " She exclaims.

He quickly reaches down and puts his hand on her head. "Whoa, hey." He says softly, petting her scalp with his thumb. "Hey, it's alright, you're okay."

She looks over to him, eyes wide and breath quick. "Wha..." She starts, looking out the windows, "Arnold, where are we? What's going on?" She asks, panicked but knows he can soothe her.

He looks over to her with a smile. "We're about an hour north of Hillwood. I thought we could both get away from the city."

"Wha..." She starts again, sitting up and removing the blanket she has wrapped around her, "where are we going?"

"It's a place on the coast I know about. It's kind of special to me. It's a nice place to just sit and listen to the ocean. We're almost there."

She nods, but still looks confused. He decides to leave it be until they arrive. After another ten minutes of silence, and passing the same dented rest stop sign for a rest stop that was torn down years ago, he pulls off to the side of road. He parks and gets out, waiting for her to come around to his side to start explaining. "It's just through here." He says, pointing toward the tree line and taking her hand. He starts guiding her through the small path he carved the last time he was here, overgrown with thicket but still recognizable.

He smiles when he sees the light from the full moon bouncing off the oceans surface through the trees. He pushes down the branches and lets her go ahead of him. She slowly meanders into the clearing, mouth agape at what she sees. He stays behind to watch his vision of beauty glow in the moonlight. This vision of her standing in front of the ocean being set aglow by a full moon with her long beautiful hair flowing in the soft breeze is a memory that will flash in his mind right before he dies. That he's sure of. "Wow." She says softly, coming up to the edge of the cliff that goes straight down to the coast. "How do you know about this place?" She asks, turning around to see him standing at the tree line with a soft smile on his face.

He nods over to his right and walks over, hoping they're still where he left them. He goes over and kneels down to the brush, moving the thicket to his relief, showing her two urns, one only slightly larger than the other. He stops as the grief tries to sting him, but he doesn't let it get too far. He hears her approaching him and looks up to see her coming to his side, kneeling down next to him. He looks into her eyes and can tell that she just knows. She was always intuitive. "I came here right before I was shipped off to basic training to scatter their ashes."

She looks over to him, looks like she wants to say something, but decides to simply reach over and grab onto his hand, massaging his knuckles with her thumb.

"I did it right as the sun was setting. I just spent the whole night sitting right over there," he says nodding toward the cliff, "just thinking about them."

They sit in silence for a moment as he looks at the two urns, that amazingly lay undisturbed after a long five years left unattended. And after that moment, mostly concentrating on the tender feeling of her hand in his, he stands up and moves toward the cliff, sitting down on the edge, letting his feet swing down over the steep drop off, which Helga follows. She sits a little over a foot apart, but he isn't having any of it. Once she's settled, he scoots himself closer to her and wraps his arm around her, putting his hand on her side and gently tugging her into him. She gives in without a fight and places her head down on his shoulder.

He smiles and places a kiss on the top of her head. They sit in comfortable silence for a long while, each just watching the moonlight bounce off the movement of the mirror surface of the ocean. After a while, she looks down to their enjoined hands, with her fidgeting with his fingers mindlessly. "I don't want you to think I regret last night, Arnold."

He looks over to her, somewhat confused as to how to respond. He knows it didn't end up being what she hoped or wanted, but he also didn't think she regretted doing it either. "You don't?"

She shakes her head against his shoulder, "No. I mean I know I... had an episode, but... I don't regret it." She says. She stops when he moves to entwine their fingers and he holds in a firm grip. He can feel her smile. "I just didn't want those memories to infect what we have. But then I started having... flashes of what happened to me and... you and me was the last thing I wanted those memories to infect."

"You're trying to act like it never happened." He states plainly.

She shrugs her shoulders. "Maybe a little. I wish it never had happened, Arnold. I would be so much better off if it never happened."

"But it did." He interjects. "And if you're worried about the way I'm going to see you... that I'll look at you as if you're... broken or something, you can squelch that fear right now. I've been through some shit too, Helga." She chuckles despite herself. "But what happened to me happened. And pushing it all down and burying it isn't how to deal with it. Trust me, I've tried."

It's then that two incidents pop into his head. The Yucatan and that bar in Honduras. Only a few people know about Honduras and they were all there, but no one knows about what happened in the Yucatan. In a way, she is right, because that's buried so far down he can't recall everything about it without effort. But as the memory comes to mind, he knows that's not true. He can picture every last detail, down to the scared expressions in the photos.

"You have?" She asks, looking up to him from his shoulder.

He hardens himself and moves his arm out from behind her, but still keeps a hold of her hand. He opens his mouth to tell her, but at the last second, against what he was going to tell her.

"We were at a stop off in this tiny village in Honduras. They kept us in Central America instead of flying us back to the States because our next mission would be near that area and in the hostage crisis business, time is everything. But we were staying in this tiny village over night, waiting for the all clear to move, and there was just a bus stop, a crowded motel, and a bar, in the middle of the jungle basically. Couldn't have been more than forty people living here. But I was sitting at the bar next to this... attractive woman. I didn't think anything of it until some guy started hitting on her, and even then it wasn't any of my business, so I just tried to tune it out.

But it was clear that this guy wouldn't leave this woman alone, and I didn't step in until it was clear he was going to get physical. She yelled at him to leave her alone, but he just started grabbing at her. I turned around and said 'if this is the way you treat women, I can't imagine what your mother must think of you'. He got in my face and told me to mind my own business, to which I replied 'you obviously can't give this young women that same luxury, so why should I?' His face hardened and he stepped up to me and got in my face, but I wasn't scared. I knew he wasn't going to do anything.

He turned and walked out of the bar with a few other guys and I turned back around. The woman thanks me and we started talking. I told her I was a geologist working for a logging company, surveying the foliage so they would know what to replant. I paid for her drinks and after about an hour, she invited me back to her room. I was alone, drunk, and in a country I'd never be in again so I agreed. But when we were walking out, this guy was waiting for us. He was holding a small pocket knife, and the other two guys behind him just had pipes. Said they were going to teach me a lesson.

I said 'you have no idea what you're getting yourself into'. Behind them, I saw Eddie stand up with his hand on his sidearm he tucked into his jeans, but I signaled him to stand down. This guy lunged at me, but I dodged, grabbed the knife and put it right where I was taught." He takes her hand and presses her fingers in between his lower ribs. "Right there, punctures the lungs. This guy grabs onto my shirt, but I'm looking at the guys behind him who are just standing there, not knowing what to do. To them, I was just some gringo. I let him fall to the ground and just stand there, holding a cheap pocket knife with my hand dripping with blood that isn't mine.

The two guys still there drop their pipes and run off down the dirt road. I see Eddie sit back down in front of the motel we're staying at like nothing strange even happened. Everyone around just stared... like it was normal. They weren't even scared, or even shocked... they just stared as this guy drown on his own blood. I dropped the knife and felt the woman next to me take my hand. She didn't even say anything when she led me to her room."

He can feel something in Helga shift just then.

"I just felt... numb. Like a walking shell, just hoping that for once, I'd feel something again. Instead I just felt emptier than I had before. I never even found out her name. She never said a word. I just... left the room, got back on the plane the next day and went onto the next stop."

He lets his head fall forward, dragged down by humiliation, guilt, regret, and shame. And he can tell, he's not the same person to her anymore. She's stone silent now, feeling cold sitting beside him.

"It's memories like that that make me question who I even am anymore."

Helga reaches over and puts her other hand on top of the one she's still holding. "You're still the same old Arnold I fell for." He looks over to her, seeing her smiling over at him softly. "You're still the same knight in shining armor you thought you had to be when we were kids." She says with a joking undertone that makes him smile. "You're just a bit jagged now."

He smiles sadly, closes his eyes and leans his forehead against hers, pressing his lips to hers after a few seconds in a sweet, emotional kiss. She presses a hand against his curved jaw line and responds in kind. They lean back and return to their original positions, with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her, looking out onto the ocean. He looks off to the side, where the two empty urns sit, an anonymous tribute to his grandparents. He really misses them.

As he feels her arm go around his back to mirror him, he realizes something that actually makes him feel like he has something brighter ahead. He has her.

* * *

 **A/N: Long hiatus, no excuse really. Loss of inspiration, I guess. But I still remember the plot. Any guesses as to what Arnold found in the Yucatan?**


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N: Hope you guys like the twist at the end of this chapter. Definately let me know! :)**

* * *

A week since that night in his apartment and it's a dream. A sweet living memory of the dream they had together back in their high school days.

It's a Wednesday and they're just being let out of the one class they have together. She smiles gleefully, no cares, as she takes his hand has her own, giving it a squeeze as she knocks it against the side of her thigh. He just smirks and purposefully falters his stride to fall against her as they walk underneath the trees along the walkway. She reacts quickly be overcorrecting and pushing against him with a mischievous giggle, pushing him away but pulling him back with an almost forceful snap of her wrist.

He's carefree. Amazingly, considering that up until her coming back into his life, which now seem a lifetime ago, he was carefree in a sense he cared for nothing. Maybe he's just worry-free, that she extinguishes all his doubts, fears, turmoil, and torment. Soothing the jagged edges of his white-knight armor over with her soft voice, kind eyes, and gentle touch. He wouldn't have it any other way. She's his sanctuary now, his safe haven, his retreat away from the windowless room his memories are locked away in, for now.

"Hey," She says, a noticeable bounce in her step and a flop in her neatly-done ponytail. She interrupts his reflection, a good move on her part probably. Reflecting too much never leads to anywhere good.

He looks over with a raised brow and expectant smirk, giving her his attention.

"Are you free this afternoon?" She asks, swinging their enjoined hands about in the space between them.

His smile widens a bit more as he readjusts the strap of his shoulder bag around his neck and looks back down to the walkway. "Yeah, why? You need company while you do homework or something?" He asks suggestively, drifting into her side.

He can hear her chuckle softly and see her eyes roll in the sides of his vision as they fall back into step. "No, I just need a lift somewhere across town."

That catches his attention and he looks over to her again with a softer, more curious brow. "Really? What's going on?"

She looks over to him and gives him a dismissive shake of her head. "It's no big deal, Arnold. I just asked to help out at the Peace Corps office down on the east end of town."

But with that, his attention is jerked in a new direction. "East end?" He asks with too much of a worried lift in his voice. He feels his feet slow him to a step. His hand tugs on her arm to get her to stop, which she does and turns around, facing him with a raised brow on her beautiful face.

"Yeah." She says simply. There's a pause and he's looking at her as if she should already know his worries and what they're focused on. "What's the problem?" She asks him with her question broken by another soft chuckle.

"Helga, the east end is dangerous." He said pointedly. His gut is already tightening, his muscles are tensing. And uncomfortable, but powerful feeling for him.

She just smiles a bit softer and takes a small step toward him, briefly running her hand across her chest before letting her finger fall into the seam of his pocket. "Arnold, I'll be fine. I just need a ride there after my afternoon class, okay?"

"But, Helga-"

"Arnold." She stops him with a firm voice. His words are caught in his throat so fast that they dissolve before reaching his tongue and all he can do is stare at her. Her brow is fixed and her gaze is set on him. His heart squeezes at the look, the guilty feeling that she's angry at his overbearing starting to make him cold sweat.

But she surprises him but reaching up and framing his jaw. Her eyes lid when they dart down to his lips and his blood melts inside his veins as she leans forward and captures his mouth in a sweet, all too sensual, open-mouthed kiss, pulling him in and moving his head to the side to deepen the kiss for him. He can feel his body jump with immediate excitement when he feels her teeth graze against his bottom lip. She presses against him hard again, finally releasing him with a loud, wet pop.

Her arms find ground around his shoulders and start to pull his weak and swaying body in toward her. His eyes flutter open just in time to see her flick her bangs out of her eyes. "It's very sweet that you're so worried about me." She says in a soft voice.

His eyes look down to the small space of ground between them, his fingers wrapping around her front belt loops.

"But I'll be fine, okay? They need me there and I made a promise that I'd be there." She explains. He draws in a long breath and lets it out in an even longer sigh, deflating. "And you're the only guy I'm dating that has a car, so..."

With her teasing quip, he finds his buzzing lips curling into a smirk despite himself as he stares down at her stomach. He looks back up to her with a half smile. "So, that means you're stuck with me then, huh?" He teases back, tugging her flat against him by her belt loops and engulfing her midsection in his arms.

She smiles fully again and tickles his hairline with her nails. "If I have to be."

They parted begrudgingly twenty minutes or so after that, their remaining time together mostly consisting of sweet nothings, with him being acutely aware that she's aware that they both avoided what was bothering him, and that it's her fault for flashing him a smile and steering him away. He could tell the pensiveness but decided to let it go. He has things to do. At least, now he does.

After giving her one last kiss in parting, he smiles as she goes into the door of the classroom.

* * *

She's in class for another two and a half hours. He's waiting outside the building for her, the mid-afternoon sun shining through the thick, autumn-colored trees that litter the campus. He lets out a long, deep sigh and swings the bag that's in his hand back and forth as he waits.

East end of town. It's not the worst part of town, but it's bad enough to be worried about her being there. She's tall, blonde, and has the kind of hotness that doesn't ruin your day but ruins your whole life. Like it did his. His offering is a step in a direction. She says she wants to stop being so scared, terrified. She wants to feel safe, she wants to feel secure, sound. She wants to sleep through the night and wake up in her own room, not back in that mop closet in Ethiopia. He's woken up in Iraq before. Woken up in the Congo, in the south African seas.

Woken up in that shake in the Yukatan.

But he knows how to cope with it. And he knows that as much as he wants to be, she wants to be able to cope with it by herself, on her own. Her independence is precious to her, and those human traffickers stole it from her.

After another few lonesome minutes leaning against a tree that's planted next to a vacant bench, the doors of the building open again and a slew of people come heading out, talking among themselves. He smiles to himself when he sees her light pink fleece and blonde hair. "Hey!" She calls from as she steps off the steps. He shoves off the tree and swings the bag in his hand again. "The office is a bit of a drive so we better head out of I'm going to make it on time." She says, planting a chaste kiss on his lips while his senses are filled with her apple scent the instant she steps into his personal space.

"I got you something, beautiful." He says and lifts the bag up to her.

A bright smile instantly splits her face in two and her eyes light up with a happy glimmer. She grabs onto to black plastic bag and her hand dives in excitedly to grab onto to item inside. She rips the bag off and her eyes fall onto the object she's holding and her smile turns heavy in a flash. After a long, thickly silent moment, she looks back up to him, her heavy smile having fallen into a blank stare. "What is this?"

"It's something that will make me feel better." He says, deciding to just argue about it now.

"Arnold, I don't need mace." She says, letting the package fall down to her side.

"Pepper spray." He corrects her, looking away.

"Arnold..." She whines and shifts her weight.

"Helga, do you remember Nadine?" He stops her, becoming almost menacingly serious with the flip of a switch.

Her expression shifts briefly as she looks away and thinks. "From high school? Yeah." She says with a lift in her voice.

He lets out a hard breath and hardens his shoulders. "After high school, she got into Bowling Green on scholarship. Halfway through her second semester, she decided to get a day job as a waitress to get some more spending money. A week after she started, she was walking back to her dorm one night, alone... where she was raped, beaten, and left unconscious behind a dumpster where she wasn't found until morning."

Her face is pale. Her color drained quickly from her features and he can tell that her heart is pounding in her throat.

"She was in the hospital physically recovering for six months and now lives at home, where she gets visited by a psychiatrist four times a week, because the person responsible was never caught, and she can't even bear the thought of going outside again."

"Oh, my god..." She says under her breath.

"Rhonda visits her once a week. It's about the only outside contact Nadine can stand." He says, letting his voice soften a bit. Rhonda doesn't know he knows, it's supposed to be a well-kept secret. Nadine was brought back to Hillwood in secret by her parents. "But it's supposed to be a secret, so... keep it under your hat." He says and looks away, tucking his hands in his pocket.

"Arnold... I know that you're worried about me." She says and chuckles heavily. "And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a work in progress. But-"

"Helga," He stops her again, "I was lucky enough to kill the sons of bitches that touched you. The only thing I regret about it is not being able to do it again." He says through gritted teeth. "But Nadine doesn't have that luxury," He starts again with a wavering voice, "and if anything ever happened to you again-"

"Hey," She says softly, stepping up to him and putting a soothing hand on his chest.

He lets his eyes drift shut and takes in a deep inhale, letting her fill his scenes, drinking her in. "I've lost enough people in my life, Helga." He says, opening his eyes and looking at her. She looks up at him with a soft, loving gaze, full of caring and worry. "I don't need to lose you again."

She lefts another soft smile curl the edge of her lips and nods. After a moment, she looks down to the package in her hand and turns it over. "Well..." She starts, turning it back over, "I do like the pink."

* * *

His pen scratches across yet another form. An hour after his lunch break, which he worked through since he has something to prove, and there's nothing. Nothing but more paperwork. He though he had enough of this stupid paperwork to do as a uniform. He looks at the picture of his little sister and hardens his resolve.

"Hey, rookie!" The other detective's voice practically booms from the other side of the bullpen.

He looks up with an inward sigh. "Need something?" He asks.

"Ready for your first case?" Cooper asks, waving a file in the air.

The detective stands up quickly, smoothing down his tie with excitement and extends his hand. "Absolutely."

Cooper smiles over his mustache and turns the file toward him and hands it to him before tucking his hands into the pockets of his gray slacks. "Assault and battery."

His pounding heart falls flat, going from excitement to annoyance in one heartbeat. "You're putting me on a case of assault and battery?" He asks, making his disagreement very clear by closing the folder and letting it fall to his side. Cooper just grins. "What about this big laundering case? You got half the precinct on it!" He says in a raised voice, gaining a few looks from a few more of the senior officers.

"We all gotta start somewhere, rookie." Cooper says and puts two fingers on the bottom of the file, raising it back up, then waving his fingers around in a circle. The detective sighs and opens the file. "Guy claims he was attacked outside his apartment. Didn't put him in the hospital, but bruised him up something fierce."

When he reads the first name on the file, his annoyance only grows. "Why the hell are you wasting time on this? You got half the criminals in the city after this dirtbag and you want me to go scouring for the guy that got a few lucky shots in?"

"Connel claims he knows who his attacker is." Cooper says.

"Great, we can pin a damn medal on the guy's chest, then." He says, closing the file again.

But Cooper is very quick to set him straight with a pointed finger shoved in his chest. "Listen, rookie! _We_ are the cops around here, got it? Now either one of two things is going on with this case; either you got some criminal going after another, or you got someone taking the law into their own hands. Either way, they belong behind bars. Now, hop to it, kid."

Knowing he's right, all he can do is nod seriously and roll his shoulders back. "You're right. I'm sorry, sir."

"Good." Cooper says and slaps his shoulder with a large, open palm. "Guy's waiting in the box."

The detective grabs his pen and small notepad, putting the file under his arm then heads out of the bullpen, down the hall to the interrogation room, where Roy Connell is waiting, his face still beaten and swollen. "Mr. Connell, I'm Detective-"

"About time!" He interrupts him. "I've been waiting here for hours."

"I'm sorry for the delay, Mr. Connell. Now, you say you were attacked outside our apartment?" The detective asks, uncapping his pen.

Ray lets out a breath and leans back in his chair. "What was your first clue?"

"What can you tell me about the attack? About what time did it take place?" He says, writing a few notes down.

"Mid-afternoon, about three o'clock maybe. I was walking out of my apartment when he grabbed me and threw me into an alley. I tried to..." He says, shifting his eyes away toward the door, "defend... myself, but he got the better of me."

"You drew on him but he wasn't having it." The detective clarifies.

A short sigh and a readjustment of his ass on the chair, he nods. "Yeah. Guy's a... Navy Seal or... Marine or something. He was hitting on my girl and got the idea that she belonged to him instead of me. Said he was going to kill me if I came near her again." Ray says and crosses his arms protectively across his chest. The detective knows that whoever his attacker was had him convinced that he was going to kill him. Bold.

"And... you believe him?"

Ray's eyes flash with anger back toward the detective. "The guy didn't even _blink_ when he pointed that gun at my head and pulled the trigger. I'm telling you, the guy's dangerous." He says and leans back in the chair, looking away again.

"Alright, alright." The detective says and goes back to his notes. "You know this guy's name?"

"Yeah, it's uh... Shortman." The detective's throat goes into his throat. "Arnold Shortman."

His heart pounds inside his chest, his ears ringing. "I-I'm sorry, one more time?"

"Arnold Shortman. The guys' name is Arnold Shortman. He's blonde, five foot ten, maybe..." Ray stops when the detective shoots out of his chair and out of interrogation, heading straight for the Captain's office.

He slows to a stop right near his desk, seeing that the guy senior officer's, along with Cooper and a few more patrolman are eyeing him. "Detective." A voice breaks him out of his thoughts. The detective looks up to see his Captain standing in front of him. "Need something?" He asks challengingly.

The detective looks around to the uniforms who are still eyeing him. He's one of the youngest ever to make detective. This is his first case. Even if it is completely against regulations, he can't drop it. He has to see it through. "I got the name of Ray Connell's attacker, Sir. I'll make a few calls and bring him in immediately."

The Captain nods slowly before turning back around and shutting the door to his office behind him.

The detective sighs nervously and sits down, glancing briefly at the picture sitting on his desk. He picks up his phone and quickly dials the number. It rings just once before a male voice answers the phone. "Detective Gerald Johanssen to speak with Ms. Lloyd, please."


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N: This chapter's kinda short, and I had intended to continue it to the next scene, but where I wanted to take it, it would have been way too long. And I felt I've introduced enough in this chapter. And if you can guess what's coming up involving the Yukatan, I'll give you a big hug! :)**

 **(Also, there's a guest reviewer accusing me of something I've never really been accused of before. But if they do read this, I'm here to let you know... you're crazy, baby doll. You know who you are, dame. ;) )**

* * *

He pulls to a stop outside the brick building. It camouflages easily with the others in the area. The only thing that stands out about it is the lack of graffiti on the walls and the comparatively clean part of the sidewalk in front of the building. He looks through the door, a large steel door with a large pane of safety glass on the top half and sees two shadows moving about before he sees the bounce and dance of her blonde ponytail through the window.

He feels his gut tighten at the sight of her. Part in anxiousness, most in reverence of her beauty. He sees her smile and wave to the other woman in the office, an older lady in her mid to late thirties, and pushes open the door. He quickly steps out of his Land Rover, leaving his surprise dinner he picked up for her on the passenger seat, moves around the front of the SUV, and sends her a smile.

"Hey," She greets, happy and casual to see him again.

He's quick to step up to her and open his arms for her to step into. She doesn't hesitate and puts her arms around his mid-section, weaving her hands together behind his back. But his arms pull her into tighter to him, close and protectively as the streetlight above them flickers and the shadow of a bug flying through the light runs over them. "So, how was it? You have fun?" He asks.

He's pulling her in and holding her, making sure any nearby predators know that there's a very real danger involved with messing with her. Him.

But she seems not to mind and take it as typical boyfriendish affection, pressing her hands into his back and moving the soft cotton of his black t-shirt about. "Yeah. Mostly just answering calls and arranging care packages. Things like that."

He draws in a long breath, sucking in her warmth against the sharp, cold wind that cut through them both. His eyes dart down to her lips that are pulled into a smile. "Sounds boring." He says, letting the breath out.

She scoffs, rolling her eyes as she deflates in his arms. "The corps is important to me, Arnold." She argues, taking his comment insultingly. "It was a huge part of my life. I don't go around saying the park rangers sound like pillow-hugging wimps, do I?"

His brow pinches and his gaze squints and lowers at her. "It's _Army_ Rangers, and Rangers lead the way. Hooah?" He says while stepping back and flexing his arm that shows his Rangers emblem tattoo, pride quickly flaring his nostrils.

There's a sparkle in her mischievous eyes and a gleam in her teeth as she smiles at him. She squeezes his mid-section tightly in a hug. "That was cute."

"Last guy who said that to me was some ate-up jarhead. Tried to tell Eddie that he needed some batteries for their chem-lights." He says.

Her brow knits. "Chem-lights?" She asks, her tone suggesting she knows what he's talking about. "You mean glow sticks? Aren't they-"

"Yep. It almost got physical and me and Eddie spent that afternoon doing push-ups." He says, still holding her close.

Helga chuckles softly, tugging at the fabric that hugs his chest, lowering her gaze. "But you know what I mean, right?" She asks, looking back up with an arched brow, looking gorgeous as she pleads.

He quickly corrects this by sending her a soft, half-lidded smirk and pulls her back in, vicing her in his arms. "Well, to make it up to you, I have a surprise for you."

"You do?" She asks, her voice quickly picking up in both pitch and speed. She practically bounces in his arms in excitement. "What is it?"

"Well, aside from the famous calzone from Nemo's I picked up for you," He says, watching as her eyes dance in the bug's shadow of the streetlight, "there's something in my back pocket if you can reach it." He says with a smile.

Her bottom lip falls in between her teeth. He feels her hands fiddle about blindly against his back until she reaches with both her hands into both his back pockets. He feels her take hold of the piece of paper, then quickly takes it from his pocket and brings it in front of her, showing him a paper folded in four squares. There's a flutter in his heart, knowing what this will mean to her. The Peace Corps obviously brought out her friendly nature, but she still has some of that old schoolyard bully in her when she's aggravated, which is quick to put people off. She could use a good friend.

He explains as she's unfolding the paper. "I saw this on the bulletin board getting out of math class and figured you'd be excited."

She finishes unfolding the paper and begins to read. "Coming this November, a series of guest lectures on advanced mathematical statistics, Professor Phe..." Her voice trails off as she reads the name. It's only a second before her eyes get wide and her expression blanks. Her head whips back up to his soft smirk before her gaze rips back down to the paper, silently rereading the name again. She looks back up again, "She-"

"She's going to be in town for a few months as a guest professor starting next week, and I figured we could pay her a visit." He says, pulling her back in by the waist.

Helga chokes on words for a few long moments as a siren wails in the background of the city noise. There's a tense pause between the two as he can sense the war going on in his girlfriend's head. He pulls it out of her by tugging on one of her belt loops with his thumb. She looks back up at him with a painfully obvious vulnerability in her eyes. "You know I have trouble making friends."

He scoffs under his breath and smiles. "Helga, she'd love to see you." He knows that she misses Helga.

"No, it's not..." She says, shaking her head, making her ponytail fall over her shoulder. "I remember how I treated her is all. I wasn't exactly a good friend."

"Helga," He starts sternly, earning her eyes fully, "Pheobe would love to see you. You were her best friend and that was elementary school."

"But Arnold, I was so bossy to her."

"Helga, Pheobe misses you." He says, hoping he doesn't give up too much. He's already told Helga way too much.

But as he earns her eyes again, she's shooting him with a curious look. "How could you possibly know that?" She accuses.

His throat closes and he nods, brushing her off with a hurt look, casting it down between the space between them. "I know what it's like to lose friends, beautiful." He says, his inner hurt violently coming out of left field. Her gaze softens as her hands land on his chest. "If I had the chance to get any of them back, I'd take it in a heartbeat, so..." He trails off, looking down at the paper still in her hand, "you're getting one."

She's slow to nod and look back down at the paper. "Advanced data analysis and statistical probability?"

"Sounds thrilling, right?"

Her smile erupts her face and she follows as he puts his arm around her and leads her to the door of his car.

But just as she's pulling open the door on her side, Arnold's eye catches movement on down the street. He stops and looks up the sidewalk, seeing the door of a dark-colored sedan fly open. His eyes quickly glance over the sedan and he notices the unmistakable markings of a police car. His hand finds the small of Helga's back and he quickly starts to silently urge her into the passenger seat. But Helga is stopped by the sight of the baige bag sitting on her seat with her surprise dinner.

"Arnold, that smells incredible." She says.

"Yeah, Nemo's is the best." He says, looking back down the street. But when he sees who it is stepping out onto the sidewalk, he feels his heart grow cold and his body drain of blood. His eyes are fixed and he can't stop Helga from noticing. He sees her look over her shoulder to him then follow his eyes down the sidewalk.

His body feels weak, it feels vulnerable. He hasn't felt this way in a long time. Not since that humid night, standing in that shack in the Yukatan. And when he snaps down the lapels of his blue suit jacket and stiffens his neck, Arnold's mind slowly comes back to him. "We should get going, Helga. It's getting cold." He says in a lowered voice.

"Wait, isn't that-" She starts, pointing at the black guy striding down the sidewalk toward them with his shoulders and head both rolled back. In some sick way to portray dominance over him. It's going to be like that, obviously. "Gerald?" She calls.

Arnold's muscles twinge right before they harden. Gerald seems to pay her no mind, only looking over to her with a stern glare and lifting his hand to her. Arnold can clearly make out the faint outline of the holster on his right side, and can clearly make out the hidden lights installed in the grill of his Crown Vic. And his in a blue suit with an off-white shirt, he's looking all too much like a Fed. "

"Arnold." His voice cuts through him, a tone of warning and edging.

Arnold's heart hardens before he can feel himself grow cold. He takes a pause, staring him down before letting his hand fall off the car door. "If you want to talk, talk to my lawyer, officer."

Helga's head whips around to look at Arnold again. "What? Wait, what's going on?"

"Arnold," Gerald starts again, taking a step toward them as Arnold starts around the back of the car, "you're coming with me."

Arnold doesn't bother to look back over his shoulder, "Not without an arrest warrant, officer." He says in a raised voice as he rounds the car.

"What the hell is going on here?" Helga demands.

"Arnold, Roy Connell says you assaulted him outside of his home. Is that true?"

"I'm sorry, officer." Arnold says, stopping just as he's about to step off the sidewalk, turning back to send Gerald a glare. "I can't answer any further questions without a lawyer present."

Arnold steps off the sidewalk, but Gerald stops him, quickly stepping up to him just as Arnold is a step or two off the sidewalk. "Damn it, Arnold! Quit playing around and come with me or it's going to get ugly." Gerald warns.

"No, wait, Gerald-" Helga tries, without result.

"Come back with a warrant, Officer." Arnold says as he turns back around, staring Gerald down from just a pace away. Neither of them flinches or waver as Arnold turns back around to face away from the officer.

"Arnold, stop right there!" Gerald says.

Gerald quickly pulls his jacket away and puts his hand on his Glock, ripping it from the holster and pointing it directly at Arnold. But when Arnold's eyes turn and see down the barrel, his mind goes silent and his body is moving.

Without hesitation and with clear precision, Arnold's hand flies up and snatches at his wrist, wrenching it in a counter-clockwise motion, twisting his hand and causing the gun to fall helplessly to the ground. " _AGH!"_

His heel then finds the back of the officer's knee, sending him to the ground, leaving the officer completely defenseless. And as the Ranger moves like muscled liquid around him, all the officer can do is freeze and wait for it to be over. The Ranger's ears are ringing, his mind is a dark, silent wind as his body moves behind the officer. His hands move, one grabbing his jaw and the other on the side of his head, ready to end it, mercilessly and without hesitation.

But then her voice comes back, calling out to him, cutting through the buzzing in his ears. "Arnold!"

The darkness falls from his mind and his body feels back under his control again. When he comes back to himself, he shakes his head and looks down, seeing Gerald on his knees in front of him, his hands in the air, with Arnold's hands on his head, ready to end his life with just one more motion.

What the hell is he doing? Who the hell is this? Is he?

His hands let Gerald go, flying off his friend in a flash as Arnold staggers back weakly. Helga is quick to his side, putting her soft, warm hands on his cheeks, petting his hair, knowing the frightened look in his eye, the shaken look. His heart is pounding and his body feels numb, weak. His breath lets out in an intense shake. "What am I doing?" He asks in a voice that's not there.

Gerald falls forward and he quickly staggers to his feet, grabbing his gun off the ground. Gerald turns and looks at the two, far too angry, and gathers his posture again, pointing his Glock back down to the ground. "Helga, step back." He orders, putting his hand on her arm, pulling her back. "I'm taking you in." He says, grabbing onto Arnold's wrists and putting them behind his back, handcuffing him.

"No... Gerald, Arnold! Wait!" Helga pleads.

Arnold looks back up to Helga as Gerald pushes him back down the sidewalk toward his car. "I'll be fine, Helga."

"B-but, Arnold, what-"

Arnold's weak body gets shoved forward as Helga follows with her eyes, helpless. He speaks just before he's shoved out of her view. "I love you, Helga."


End file.
